The Quiet Girl (30 page)

She stroked his arm. He had never been able to create a picture of her body in his mind. Sometimes she seemed as frail as a bird, sometimes as solid as a freestyle wrestler. But always when she touched him he could hear the earth, the earth and the sea.

"Where are we in all this?" she said. "You and I?"

"With you," he said, "the volume controls are lost. And I want to run away."

She was quiet. The woods were quiet. The wind had stopped blowing. The concept of an artistic pause is not unknown to SheAlmighty. "I'm afraid too," she said. "Couldn't we run away together?"

He waited. She had her first chance to be candid; the possibility was there, and then it passed.

"To be twelve years old," he said, "or sixteen, or nineteen, and to have experienced that we live in an illusion, that in reality the world doesn't consist of material but of sound--that's not easy. Where do you go? In the mid-seventies. Having experienced something that no one else in the surrounding two thousand miles has heard. It makes you lonely. It creates a combination of loneliness and megalomania. You know you won't be understood. Not by your family. Not by your artist friends. Not by pastors. Not by physicians. Not by wise people. By no one. Nevertheless, you keep looking."

She had become absolutely quiet. Perhaps she sensed it was getting close. Her second chance came--he could hear it; she muffed that chance too. The moment was open, and then it closed again.

"Artists are believers," he said. "Deeply religious, like Gypsies and sailors. Perhaps because they live close to death. Perhaps because they travel light. Perhaps because they work with illusions. Each evening, while music plays, you unfold reality and exhibit it in the ring, and fold it up again, and carry it outside. When you've done this five thousand times, you begin to sense that the world around us is a mirage. That no matter how much one loves another person, a woman, a child, sooner or later that person must be carried out of the ring to rot away. And if one is completely honest, one realizes that all of us already stink a little. So one turns to some sort of God. In the  heart of every artist is a longing, an empty space, something like SheAlmighty.

"And the Danish State Church didn't really help with that; the only ones who took religious experience seriously were the fundamentalists in the Indre Mission Church, and they didn't like the circus. So some artists developed their own religion, like my father; he's a believing atheist and proud of it. Others used one of two shops, the Catholic Church on Bred Street or the Eastern Orthodox Church. My mother took me along to the church on Nevsky Street. We spoke with a woman. The woman was wearing a habit. My mother told her that my father had left the circus and wanted her to leave too. What should she do? I wasn't more than eight years old--still I knew what the woman should have answered. She didn't do that. She spoke only one sentence: 'I like the circus very much myself.' We sat there perhaps ten more minutes, in complete silence. Then we left. When I was nineteen, and things weren't going well, I wrote to her."

He stopped speaking; the silence was Stina's final chance. In the fairy tales and in this so-called reality, there are always three chances.

She missed this one as well.

He took out the folded letter and laid it on the bench.

"Her name was Mother Rabia," he said. "I did some investigating and found out that she was a deaconess and head of a convent. I wrote to her. In that letter I revealed for the first time to any human being what I've told you today. Will you read it out loud, please?"

She did not move. He stood up.

"I've forgotten my glasses," he said, "but I still remember it by heart. It begins like this: 'SheAlmighty has tuned each person in a musical key, and I--Kasper Krone, the clown--am in the difficult position of being able to hear that.' It's twelve years since I wrote that letter; I didn't save a copy. This morning I saw it again. In your apartment. I thought I'd find it. That's why I went there."

"She answered you," said Stina. "Mother Rabia answered you. Why didn't you respond to her answer?"

He had circled around her; now he stood next to her. His hands closed around her forearms.

"I'm the one who's asking the questions," he whispered. "How did you get that letter?"

"Will you please let go of me?"

Her voice was husky, amicable, pleading.

He put weight behind the pressure; she was forced to her knees. "You'll find out," she said. "But not now."

"Now," he said.

"I've had some experiences in the past," she said. "With men and violence. Bad experiences. I get very frightened."

Her face had turned gray. Fatigued.

He squeezed harder. Something--he didn't know what--had seized and possessed him.

"Let's hear about the letter," he said.

He had underestimated her physical strength, now as in the past. From her kneeling position she kicked his shin with an outstretched instep. The blow was so hard that at first there was no pain, just paralysis. His legs buckled under him. As a child she had climbed trees and played with boys--he could hear that. She locked his wrists as he fell, so he couldn't cushion the fall. Fie hit the ground with his shoulder, like cyclists and artists, to protect his head. He heard his collarbone break with a sound like a dry branch cracking off an ash tree.

She was on her feet, but he threw himself forward from a prone position. He got hold of her ankle and pulled, then crawled after her until they lay beside each other.

"When you found me on the beach," he said. "That wasn't accidental. I'm part of something very big. You want something from me."  He took hold of her jaw. His fingers pressed the nerve centers behind the jaw muscles.

"My basic psychological problem," he said, "is that I can't trust women. Women always want something besides love. A man's body, maybe. His fame. His money."

She twisted her head free.

"I'm glad I don't have to hide it any longer now," she said. "That it's your body I want."

He shut her jaw again.

"There's something more than that," he said. "You've gone very far. Given a performance that's lasted three months now. Tell me what it's all about."

He squeezed.

"You've ruined everything," she said.

Then she head-butted him.

That was the one thing he hadn't expected. She hit perfectly. Not on the nose, which causes heavy bleeding. Not too high up, where the skull is thick. But right above the ridge of the nose.

He went out like a light. Only for a few minutes, but when he began to hear and see again, she was gone. There were people around him, but at a distance. Respectable citizens who were walking their dogs and staring at him. He could hear their thoughts. They thought: "There lies another addict who picked psilocybin mushrooms on fertile lawns and has drifted off to dreamland now."

He would need to adjust his self-image yet again. He had always imagined that in Deer Park he would ride in a carriage with a princess.

* * *

He had driven home with one arm. He had parked beside the trailer and sat in the car for a while. Nature had played the last part of Die Kunst der Fuge. And he had understood that he would never see her again.
 
 

4

He could remember the telephone number for Rigshospital. He wanted to say goodbye. He dialed the number. Maximillian answered the phone himself.

"It's me," said Kasper. "I'm calling from the airport."

"So we're both about to leave on a somewhat bigger trip," said Maximillian.

They were quiet for a while.

"Can you remember," said Kasper, "when we children were small. When we ate lunch after morning rehearsals. There were always children visiting, and the children didn't have to sit down for lunch; we ran back and forth from the table. Took bites. We didn't have to stop playing. And when we rehearsed, you never pressured us, neither you nor Mother. Never. I never said thank you for that."

He searched for a word, then it came to him. It was old-fashioned, outdated, but nevertheless exactly the right word.

"Respect," he said. "There was always a kind of respect. Even if you and Mother fought. Even when I was very little."

When Maximillian answered his voice was hoarse, like someone with a very bad sore throat.

"We did our best. And usually--usually it wasn't good enough. My fondest memories are of the nights. After we'd taken off our makeup. When we ate together. Outside the trailer. And your mother had baked bread. Can you remember that?"

"We burned our fingers on the crust."

"We were completely happy. Some of those nights."

They were quiet together, for the last time.

"When the plane takes off," said Maximillian, "what will you think about?"

"About you and Mother," said Kasper. "About Stina. About the little girl I tried to find. I didn't find her. And you?"

"About your mother. And you. And Vivian. And then I'll prepare myself, like in the horseback riders' gangway. Just before the curtain goes up, when you have your act ready. The tickets are sold. But still, you have no idea what will happen."

"Neither one of us will hang up first," said Kasper. "We'll hang up simultaneously. Timing, that always meant a lot to both you and me. I'll count to three. And we'll hang up."

He heard the door open behind him. They were coming to get him. Without turning around, he counted slowly and clearly to three. He and his father hung up at the same time.

Kassander entered the cell. Behind him stood two women. White and compassionate, like the figures of light Elisabeth Kübler-Ross writes about. But more attractive. More sexually defined than angels.

They leaned over him. Took the violin from him. Took his pulse. Pulled up his sleeve. Wrapped a blood-pressure cuff on his upper arm. He felt a cold stethoscope against his chest.

One of them was the African. Now wearing a white coat. With her hair in two hundred tiny braids. But it was still her. Her forehead was rounded like an orb. Above a beautiful mocha-colored continent.

"His heart is about to give out," she said. "He won't be flying today. We'll take him back with us. He needs immediate surgery."

Kasper put his hand on his heart. Now he could feel it too. The pain of being rejected by his beloved. Expatriated from his fatherland. Sorrow over the uncertain future. Over the beauty of the "
Chaconne.
"

Kassander blocked their way.

"We have orders directly from the Ministry of Justice," he said.

The African drew herself erect. She was taller than the officer.

"His pulse is thirty-six. Irregular, extremely weak heartbeat. He's very close to throwing in the towel. Either you move, or we'll take you to court. Disciplinary action, dereliction of duty. You'll get at least six years. For gross negligence and manslaughter."

"I'll make a phone call," said Kassander.

There was not much left of his voice.

He made the call from a telephone at the back of the premises. Returned. He walked like a zombie. Laid a form on the counter.

"Twenty-four hours," he said. "He's booked on Iberia's morning flight at seven-twenty. He's a repatriation case. They're under the purview of the ministry."

The African signed. The women took hold of Kasper under his arms and lifted him up. He pulled them close, for reasons of health. And cautiously took the first tentative steps back toward freedom.
 

PART FIVE

1

They had an ambulance waiting and helped him into it. A frosted glass divider separated them from the front seat; it was pushed to the side. The driver and the woman beside him were wearing white coats too.

The siren started, the ambulance drove across the area reserved for taxis, then across the parking lot, and made a U-turn. The driver's jacket had a high collar, but above it a dozen scars crawled up to the man's head like white flames; it was Franz Fieber.

A police car with flashing lights passed them going in the opposite direction. The women had drawn away from Kasper, and their solicitousness had disappeared. That was what one could expect. Somewhere Saint Gregory writes that one of the reasons many of the desert fathers became celibate was the discover}' that when women had achieved what they wanted, their motherliness disappeared.

They passed Ørestaden. And turned right at the Transport Center exit. The siren got turned off. The ambulance drove across the grass, without slowing down, and came to a stop next to a large Audi ambulance behind a restaurant shut for the evening. The women lifted Kasper into the back of the new ambulance while Franz Fieber swung himself from one front seat to the other, like an ape, without using his crutches. The Audi accelerated and headed out onto the highway, out into the passing lane. The speedometer showed 110 miles an hour; Kasper could hear sirens both in front of them and behind them. Somewhere ahead and above them a helicopter approached.

"They're about to close off all of Amager Island," said Franz Fieber. "What does your fine hearing say?"

"Let us all pray," said Kasper. "For fog. And for an open lane crossing the Zealand Bridge."

The car turned off the highway. Into a wall of fog. The road disappeared. The approaching cars dwindled into twinkling yellow dots. The women stared at him.

"There are two possibilities," said Kasper. "Either I have a direct link to SheAlmighty. Or I heard the fog. And heard that there are no sirens in the direction of the bridge."

He felt his body collapse. Hands supported him as he slumped onto the stretcher. He tried to stay conscious by determining their route by the sound: the incoming planes on Runway 12, a shorter runway--for strong north or south winds--which gave the landings a particular sound and rhythm. The seagulls when the ambulance crossed the bridge. The social realism of outer Valby Outer Frederiksberg's tone of a semipermanent home for the elderly. The special blend of bird sanctuary and traffic hell where the Farum highway cuts through Utterslev moor.

He was in and out of consciousness. They had gotten away and the traffic had thinned out when the ambulance turned onto a gravel road. Without slowing down, they passed a gate that he recognized; it was part of the fence around Rabia Institute. The Audi stopped, reality was tuned down, it faded, and was gone.