The Quiet Girl (44 page)

"Do they use drugs in the circus?" she said.

He had no idea where she was going with that question.

"Only in strength disciplines. Anabolic steroids. They're used in all international strength performances these days."

"Sister Gloria showed us a list. From Physicians Weekly. About the most habit-forming drugs in the world. They're created in laboratories. The few people who have taken them--the discoverer and a couple of laboratory technicians--spend the rest of their lives trying to get money. A fix costs a hundred thousand kroner and up. The effect lasts from one to ten minutes. It's described as an extremely heightened feeling of clarity and love."

The tunnel opened around them. Here the ceiling was arched like an airplane hangar. In the faint light he saw a vestige of something that looked like an altar.

"The remnants," said Stina, "of foundations under the first Jewish synagogues. Built on top of a heathen sacrificial altar."

She pointed to what looked like fallen timber.

"Old water pipes. Made from hollowed-out trees."

Kasper felt his impression of the city changing. He had thought it rested on lime and clay. It didn't. It rested on garbage and crumbling pieces of its religious past.

He fine-tuned his prayer. The only thing you could depend on. Besides love. And even that wasn't certain.

"Five thousand people."

Stina whispered the words in his ear. He had always loved her breath; it changed according to her moods, or was it his moods?

Right now it had a hint of petroleum.

"That was Mother Maria's rough estimate. When Gloria told us about the drugs. There are five thousand people in the world who have taken them. Not the chemical drugs. But people who have experienced something similar. Who have discovered that reality is a birdcage. And who are looking for the gate that leads out of the cage."

He turned and looked straight at her. She and the Blue Lady and KlaraMaria could have founded a company. And leased their forthright gaze to a demolition firm.

"We saw you on television," she said. "The sisters and I. That's twelve years ago. During an intermission. When it was quiet. Mother Maria says: 'He's one who has tried those drugs. He's a seeker.' And then she looks at me. And says: 'You could meet him.' And I say: 'Why should I?' And she says: 'To help him by being a guide. And because he has a way with children.' That's why I came. In my own way."

"Why the unfriendliness, then? Why did you run away on Strand Road? To begin with?"

She hesitated.

"When I faced you, I could sense all the things you weren't able to control. Your inner chaos. And also something else. So it suddenly felt unpredictable. Overwhelming."

During the last few minutes he had heard some noise ahead. Like huge turbines. Now the sound got louder, became more powerful, like a waterfall. The trolley stopped. The tunnel ended in a cement wall. Below them the dark water was sucked through a grate.

"Lunch break," said Stina. "For three minutes."

Sister Gloria opened a backpack. Distributed bread and cheese. Kasper shifted the food from one hand to another. The sewer smell hadn't disappeared; one didn't get used to it as one could have hoped. In fact, it had gotten worse. And now it was mixed with the odor of rotting fatty substances, like the cesspool from a kitchen sink raised to brutal potency.

On the wall of the tunnel was a metal cover; Stina knocked it off with the red crowbar. Behind the cover was a lighting control console unlike any Kasper had ever seen before. Franz Fieber plugged a laptop into the console. He and Stina bent over the computer screen. As she worked, Stina ate. Calmly. He remembered the first time she had come in while he was sitting on the toilet. He was having his morning bowel movement, his ritual time on the seat. From the little CD player on a shelf in the toilet Hans Fagius was playing BWV 565 on the restored baroque organ in St. Kristina's Church in Falun. Stina opened the door, walked in, and turned down the music. In one hand she was holding a sandwich, a little like now. Avocado and Camembert
lait cru
.

"I've got something important to tell you," she said.

He felt his abdomen contract. All living beings want to crap in peace. You can't expel from your body at the same time as you relax the bottom part of it. You can't do a head butt. Can't correspond with the tax authorities.

She took a bite of her sandwich. Completely unaffected by the situation. He suddenly understood that even deep inhibitions were culturally determined. And that somehow or other she was free of them.

"I discovered something this morning," she said. "Just as you opened your eyes. And the day was beginning. It seemed as if I were sitting at your deathbed."

He couldn't say anything. He was on the toilet. And she spoke as if she were in some Shakespeare play. He had no familiar reference point from which to respond.

"At that moment," she said, "I realized that I love you."

What should he say to that? In such a situation?

"Would you please leave," he said. "I need to wipe myself."

* * *

She turned her head away from the computer screen.

"We're at the main pump station, before the pipes go down under the ocean. On the other side there should be a new conduit they haven't put into use yet. But we're going farther than the pump station."

She turned back to the screen. Kasper heard his father beside him. Maximillian was leaning on a crutch, one of Franz Fieber's. The African had stuck the fluid bags into the breast pockets of his coveralls. Together the father and son watched the two women and the young man who were bent over the console and computer.

"They're like soldiers," said Maximillian. "Elite soldiers. But they have no anger. What drives them?"

Kasper heard his system synchronize with his father's. It happens in all families. Between all people who care about each other deeply. But it happens rarely. And usually no one discovers it. Discovers that for a brief moment the mask is gone. The neuroses. The inborn psychological traumas. For a brief time all the previous mistakes, which we carefully preserve in our memory for possible use against each other, are gone. They're gone for a moment, and one hears entirely ordinary humanity. Frail, but insistent. Among rats and pump stations and foul rivers of sludge.

"They're filled with something," said the sick man. "Something so powerful they're willing to die for it. I can tell that. What is it?"

Kasper heard the longing in his father's voice.

"Your mother and Vivian," Maximillian continued. "Those two women. That's the closest I've come to letting go. But still. When it comes right down to it, I didn't dare. The same with my love for the circus. I didn't dare. And my love for you."

They looked straight at each other. With no reservations. "Having you," said Maximillian. "That was the finest thing Helene and I did. Many other things were good. But you were the best."

Kasper reached out his hand and laid it against the sick man's temple. Maximillian bore the intensity for a few moments, then turned away. But it was still the longest contact Kasper ever remembered having had with his father.

"It will empty in one hundred eighty seconds," said the African.

"After that, we'll go through."

Kasper heard a change in the sound of the colossal pump. He turned toward the shiny cylinder; it was as big as a fermentation vat in a brewery. Its walls were gleaming with condensation. Where the water dripped onto the tunnel's cement, a plant with glossy darkgreen leaves was growing, completely contrary to nature. Stina leaned over and picked a leaf. She held it up to his face. On the shiny surface lay a drop of water.

"It's a type of hazelwort. It can survive with just the emergency lighting."

She stood very close to him.

"I had a good childhood," she said. "Not one day in a wheelchair. Nothing more serious than two stitches and a little chlorhexidine in the emergency room. I had a game I played."

The drop of water began to wander along the edge of the leaf. "I tried to understand a drop of water. Tried to understand what held it together. What kept it from separating into smaller parts."

The movement must have come from her hands. But they were motionless. Larger than his. Veined. Cool at first. But when she had touched him, stroked his skin for just a minute, they became very warm. But always calm. As they were now. But under the calmness he heard trembling, like the underlying tone of a Hindu raga. It took him a moment to identify what it was. Then he heard; it was anxiety for the children. But she still kept a firm grip on reality.

"What holds it together?" she said.

He had loved her curiosity. It was a hunger that was insatiable. It was like the curiosity of a clown. And of children. An openness, an appetite for the world, where nothing is taken for granted.

"I still play that game," she whispered. "Just a little differently. A little more concentration. A little broader scope. That's the only difference. Between the girl and the woman. Between the child and the adult. I collect in my mind everything we know about the bonding force in fluids as compared to air. The elasticity of the drop. Its attempt to find the least possible potential energy. Dirichlet's theorem. Normally we can hold only a couple of theorems at a time. I try to hold them all. As a form of professional intuition. And when I'm on the verge of understanding, am very, very close to it, and at the same time realize we'll never get there completely, and my mind is about to explode, I let go of all my understanding and go back to the drop."

The leaf was quiet. The drop existed. Nothing moved. He heard the last of the water being pumped out.

"And then, in brief, there seems to be no difference between the drop and me."

Carefully, very carefully, she laid the leaf down on the gray concrete.

"When that happens, on the rare occasions it happens, one has an inkling of what it will cost. To actually get there. It's a price no researcher can pay. And continue to be a researcher. Because it will cost understanding itself. You can't be right up next to something, and at the same time want to understand it. Do you know what I mean?"

* * *

There were steps on the outside of the cylinder. They went up about ten feet. Three conduits led from the pump station exit. The smallest had a diameter of about two and a half feet.

The cylinder's cover had an electric lock; it had sprung open. Stina must have opened it from the light console.

"Now they know in the surveillance center that something is wrong," she said. "In five minutes the city authorities will be here. Plus TDC telecommunications and the military. Falling all over each other. With dogs and firemen with their breathing apparatus. But by that time we'll be gone."

She hoisted herself over the edge of the pump case. Kasper tried to follow her. His body would not move. She pulled him up after her. Two of the conduits were closed by electric valves. The third was open. Stina turned on her headlamp.

They looked into a flawless deep-green world. The conduit was completely round, the inside lined with green material that gave off a muted reflected light, like soft-tone recessed lighting.

"Polyvinyl chloride," she said. "From Aarsleff pipe technologies. They've given the sewage system a life-extension treatment so it will last a little longer. They've pulled a PVC stocking inside the pipes."

It felt as if you could see infinitely far in and down.

"It's like looking into your own birth canal," he said. "It's very beautiful. Are the surveillance cameras turned off?"

She nodded.

"How about," he said, "using this unseen moment for a little kiss?"

She tried to get away from him. But she was standing on a narrow step.

"I know," he said, "that maybe you would say God sees us. But God is on our side. And Kierkegaard. Don't you remember what he says in Works of Love? Every love relationship is a shameless triangle. You, me, and Our Lord."

She twisted her head away.

"Goethe," he said. "And Jung. And Grof. And Bach. They're all in complete agreement. Before the great breakthrough, one stands mouth to mouth with the beloved facing one's own birth."

She freed herself from his hypnotic effect.

"Pure pop," she said. "You were never anything but pop culture!"

The sound of her anger was condensed, like acid, perhaps due to the alembic of the pump case around them. It functioned like an acoustic concave mirror, increased and concentrated the tone. She had a melodious voice. Enhanced in the Zahle School girls' chorus. Conducted by Hess-Theissen. But at the same time it could be a whiplash. He had seen her quick-freeze an entire super-elliptical conference table of chief engineers.

"I'm thirsting for you," he said.

"Your source, please," she said. "That's borrowed. Stolen. Patchwork!"

She gripped the arm of his coveralls.

"Your feelings have no depth. You run, Kasper. You run away. One day it will catch up with you. The depth, I mean. Those declarations of love. You live and talk as if you're performing in the ring all the time."

He began to hum. The acoustics in the steel conduit were fantastic. The sound crept around along the wall and came back, as in a whispering gallery. He hummed eight bars, charmingly, irresistibly, fantastically.

"Paris Symphony," he said. "The development of the first movement. Where the main theme modulates into a crescendo. And in the final movement. At the end of the exposition. He simulates a fugue. Without developing it. That's pop music. He knows it himself. Writes from Paris to his father: I want you to know, Father, that I'm doing thus and so, in this and that measure; the audience will weep snot--they will love it. Pop music. But it works. It goes right to the heart. Technically it isn't anything special. No professional depth. But it's charming. It works. It works absolutely perfectly."

He leaned toward her.

"The heart. And the intensity. Those two things are why I went into the ring."

Their faces were right next to each other. He did not move an inch.

She climbed into the pipe's opening.