The Quiet Girl (39 page)

A new sound came through the door, the hiss of a compressed-gas cylinder. The angle grinder now had the company of a cutting torch.

"We're going to leave now," said the African.

She opened a door that led to a smaller room with yet another door, and opened that too; a stairway seemed to fall forward into bottomless darkness.

Kasper tried to pull himself together, to listen, but his hearing was out of order. He felt like a child, an infant in swaddling clothes. He chose a prayer to the Virgin Mary, leaned into the prayer, and left the practical things to Mother.

The African picked up a telephone on the table and called someone. Kasper heard Franz Fieber answer on the other end.

"And then pick us up on the surface," she said.

"The photograph," said Kasper. "In your drawer. We don't have a scientific explanation of that."

She had always hated to be asked for explanations. To be asked for appointments. She hated everything that seemed to threaten her freedom.

"She came to see me."

"Where?" he said. "I--your counterpart, your soul mate--haven't been able to find you. How would a ten-year-old girl be able to do it?"

The African hung up the telephone. Stina walked over to the door by the stairway.

"This leads down to the metro," she said. "Via a sewer system and the main cable conduit from Havne Street to Holmen."

* * *

They carried him down the stairs, pushed him along an underground canal, lowered him down a skid. He had put an arm around each woman, well aware that yet another existential monotony was about to set in. But an unbroken stream of healing vitality emanates from femininity. Precisely in his situation, during a period of convalescence, this healing quality was crucial. Bach would have done the same.

They came out into the metro tunnel. It was illuminated by emergency lights, the rails covered with water. Stina knelt in front of the wheelchair.

"This is the last time," she said, "that the two of us will see each other."

She ran her fingertips gently over his wounds and stitches. Over the swollen parts of his face. The touch was so careful that there was no pain. Already back then, before she disappeared, when she touched him he had felt that the greatest performances were not those on a podium or in the ring. The greatest performances were when fingertips took away a very thin veil between people and uncovered the universe in its entirety.

"It's usual," he whispered, "for severe illness and injury to precede a great breakthrough in love."

"It's usual," she whispered, "that a person who can't learn has to feel."
 

7

For most of us, our relationship to our beloved is expressed in a particular piece of music. Mahler used one of the adagios when he proposed to Alma; for Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov it was the "Moonlight Sonata"; for Kasper it was the "
Chaconne
." He heard it now, in the water dripping from the walls, in the echo in the tunnel, in the African's breathing. She took his pulse without slowing down and without saying anything, but he could hear her concern. He drifted in and out of consciousness.

They went through an unlighted area, she pushed him up a skid, opened a door, and wheeled him out into the dawn. They were at Nørreport Station. There were people around them, a growing number. He had always avoided crowds of people; a crowd has too many sounds, which was one of the reasons he had stayed with the circus. Had stayed in the ring. Had stayed with music. A performer tries to synchronize everyone else's sound with his own system. When his performance as a silver clown won at the circus festival in Monte Carlo the first time, after the award ceremony he had walked slowly from the Grand Palais next to the big state casino down to the ocean. Nine out of ten people he passed had recognized him. He had wondered if this might be another way to solve the problem. If only you are famous enough, if only you are the king, if only your signal is strong enough, then you drown out all the others.

The next twenty years had pared down that position, especially the last five years. He had realized that in a large gathering neither the virtuoso nor the king is safe. It's only if you are anonymous. As he was now. Nobody looked at him, and if anyone did, it was to understand why a princess like the African had taken the stable boy out in a wheelchair.

Somebody whistled three notes, a pure, broken C-major chord; he was the one whistling. That's the drawback for those of us who are victims of our own charisma. He was wheeled forward onto a lift, hoisted up, rolled into place in the delivery van. Franz Fieber sat in the driver's seat.

"I, who am childless," said Kasper, "was about to develop a love for you that could be compared to what a father feels for a son. Until a little while ago, when I got some information that makes me think I've caught you in still another lie. The man whose gondola Sister Gloria and I borrowed, the man with turquoise eyes and a complexion like a tournedos, isn't one of your drivers. He's a naval officer. Who is connected to all this."

Franz Fieber hesitated. Kasper drew his wheelchair closer to the front seat. The young man edged away.

"Gert Suenson," said Fieber. "He's from the Navigation and Hydrography Administration. He's connected to the lay order. He's responsible for all the traffic in and out of the barricaded area. He has helped the police. In the hunt for Kain."

Kasper closed his eyes. It's terrible to be shut in, regardless of whether the cell is called a circus ring or the generally accepted version of reality.

"We haven't had breakfast," he said. "Is there any espresso left? And a drop of Armagnac?"

His consciousness phased out on its own; he tried to tune into the sound of his absence, and then he was gone.
 

PART SEVEN

1

He woke up in the hospital bed in his cell. The Blue Lady was sitting on a chair by the head of the bed.

He had a headache that made the combined hangovers of his entire life mere hypochondria.

Something tugged at him from deep down; he was dragged beneath the border of alert consciousness. He could hear someone singing; it was Stina.

All the women in his life had sung: his mother, Stina, Klara-Maria, the nuns, Sonja, the Police Women's Chorus; there was no end to the delights. All he needed was the Blue Lady. To make the cast complete.

Stina laughed toward him. He realized it was a dream founded on actual events, and chose to remain in the dream; he was not yet in shape to confront reality.

She sang as she had sung back then, spontaneously, with no announcement. She had gently drawn him backward and laid his head in her lap. Then she had touched him. Had stroked his skin, and sung. It had been the classics, pop singers like Kim Larsen and Shu-Bi-Dua, the great operas. Her voice was husky, lingering; he wished Rachmaninoff, and brain researchers Larsen and Bundesen, could have heard her. They would have felt completely understood. She glided over into the "Jewel Song" from Gounod's Faust, "Am I awake, or is my head whirling in a marvelous dream?" She hummed Rachmaninoff's "Vocalise." She sang like Renée Fleming. With only a semitone span. But just as effortlessly, she adapted the melody on the spot.

Her fingers against his skin had followed the music. He had begun to understand what the Savior meant by saying that God's kingdom is here and now; her touch and her voice created a Paradise on earth all around him.

He flowed into the feeling of being a child. He heard his own tonal space, it was 90 percent feminine; he felt like a woman, utterly receptive.

He heard the momentary relief of not having to be only a man. Not having to persevere. To keep things going.

He felt the love in her fingers. Right now, for a brief moment, he was accepted. For the sake of his honest face. For the sake of his clear blue eyes. For no reason at all. Just because he existed.

Perhaps love begins when it is all right, both for another person and for yourself, to be the way you are. Even if you are named Kasper. And have told women, including the one touching you right now, so many untrue stories that you no longer know where SheAlmighty's reality begins and your own fabrications end. And even if you have crossed so many boundaries that you no longer know if you can find the way home.

His legs had itched. To run away. From the unbearable knowledge that there was almost a 100 percent probability that a moment like this would never come again.

She modulated to "Bona Nox." Her voice was both affectionate and protective.

He felt the silence open. Like a great hand that was preparing to pick him up. He opened his eyes. The Blue Lady leaned over him. She wiped his forehead with a damp cloth.

"You've slept for twenty-four hours," she said. "You will survive. Again."

* * *

He expanded his sense perception. The surroundings were only faintly audible, almost gone. He knew that was due to the presence of the abbess. He had experienced the phenomenon a few times before, first with his mother, and several instances with Maximillian. With a few partners in the ring. Then with Stina. With KlaraMaria. He had turned forty before he dared to fully believe it. That hearing is collective. When the contact between two people intensifies, the outer world first grows fainter, and then begins to disappear altogether. Because for these two people at that moment, all that exists in the universe is the other person. This is what began to happen now. A voice whispered; it was his voice.

"They've used her, perhaps also the boy, to predict the earthquakes; the children must have some sort of clairvoyance. They've bought up property in the inner city and they're going to sell it now, soon. They will keep the children alive at least until then. They need her--they need both of them. To make it seem credible that there won't be any more earthquakes. We have to get hold of the police."

"That won't be a problem," she said. "They can be here the moment we need them. You and Sister Gloria were seen."

The morning sun was very low, the color of white gold. The surface of the water was motionless, like tightly stretched tinfoil. The unmoving surface mirrored a second sun. The outskirts of the city were hidden by a narrow band of white mist. All outer sounds were drawn into the woman's listening.

They could have been in any mythological place in the world. She wanted to tell him something, without words, with her silence, but he did not understand.

"You have to eat," she said.

* * *

Sister Gloria brought him a tray, soup and bread. He said a short prayer, and then bit into the bread.

"It's good to say grace before you eat," he said. "The prayer allows you to go through a microscopic death and rebirth. You let yourself go into divine formlessness. And then you are re-created and resurrected as a newborn, with all your brain cells and all your taste buds and potency and hearing intact. Ideally, that is."

"Even if an archangel stood before you," said the African, "you wouldn't stop talking."

He took another bite of bread and thought about his mother. The bun was fresh from the oven; its crust was thin, smooth, and hard as glass. The crunch when his teeth bit into it told him that it was baked in a hot ceramic oven after having been brushed with a mixture of yogurt, oil, and sea salt. The smell was deep and complex, like a human body's.

"The first time I was here," he said, "a year ago, at night, you waited outside the Blue Lady's door. Why?"

"Mother Maria asked me to."

"When?"

"Earlier in the day."

It was beef soup; it tasted of eternal life and of the fact that all living beings consume one another.

"Earlier in the day she couldn't have known that I'd come."

"She knew it for years. We saw you on television. That was one of the first times I was in Denmark. Sometimes Mother Maria likes to look at television. Especially circus performances. We saw Cirque du Soleil. She asked who the clown was. One of the sisters said: 'He's Danish.' She said: 'He'll come to see us.' Just that. Nothing else. 'He'll come to see us here.'"

Kasper dipped his bread in the soup. Chewed mechanically.

"Mother Maria," said the African, "says some people think the great composers are saints who allowed themselves to be born among us. To help all of us. Then one can better understand. About Bach."

She was still dazed by the serenade. It was touching. On the other hand, it's important to help people get over their fascination.

"Also the great cooks," he said. "You must have one down in the kitchen. Now will you please leave Grandfather in peace? I need to digest my food."

* * *

The Blue Lady was in the room. He hadn't heard her come in.

"A person can't be in the circus for thirty-five years," he said, "without meeting killers. When I listened to the place within them from, which the murder was committed, I never heard the killers themselves. I heard possession. By something else. The question of guilt is complicated. In an acoustical sense."

She did not say anything.

He felt his anger rise.

"I've identified him," he said. "The man who murdered the child. I wanted to be able to take him out of circulation. Once and for all."

"There's no doubt you're capable of that," she said.

His anger faded away. Leaving a feeling of sorrow. Of no escape.

"Kain," he said, "studied the consequences of a catastrophe outside Copenhagen. And now we have an earthquake."

"For those who pray," she said, "the number of remarkable coincidences increases."

It took him a long time to turn his head. When the feat was accomplished her chair was empty. She was gone. Had she even been there at all?

* * *

The African pushed him through the white corridors.

"I signed a contract with her," he said. "Agreed to risk my career. To try to stop those who were after KlaraMaria. To support all of you. If she knew I would come, why all the stipulations?"

They rode down on the elevator. She did not reply until they reached the bottom and were out.

"Mother Maria," she said, "has often said that it's not good for people to receive the mystery of religion too easily. They can't value it then. Especially bankers."