The Susan Effect

by Peter Høeg

  His tone conceals a glee I find hard to comprehend.

  ‘Guesswork,’ I say.

  He smiles again.

  ‘It’s quite simple. You don’t need any Future Commission. All you need to do is ask yourself the following question: What impact did two world wars have on global leadership? What impact did sixty million deaths actually have? They left one mark: the UN. The weak and infirm, US-dominated United Nations. That’s all. Humankind has carried on in exactly the same way, as if nothing happened. So it’s bound to go wrong, isn’t it?’

  He glances back at the plane. His suitcases are being loaded.

  ‘I had a colleague at the National Bank once. He was on the chairmanship of the Economic Council, too. One of Scandinavia’s brightest minds. We were considering him for the commission. But he had a drinking problem. One night out, in November, he climbs onto the quay at Nyhavn to urinate into the canal, only he falls in. At the same time, a police car happens by and they fish him out. He’s in a coma for two days, but miraculously he makes a full recovery. A couple of months and he’s back at the bottle. Two years later, in November again, he climbs onto the quay at exactly the same place, with the same purpose, to piss into the canal. He falls in. Only this time there’s no police car. They found him the next day, sunk to the bottom. The Western world is that man. The future isn’t our learning from our mistakes. It’s our denying there ever was a mistake.’

  I picture Thit and Harald in my mind’s eye. And millions of other children like them.

  ‘There’s a choice,’ I say. ‘There’s always a choice.’

  ‘Didn’t you say you were a physicist? Free choice is an illusion. We are biological creatures. We’ve evolved through competition. Our nervous systems are programmed into securing as much as possible for our own benefit. No matter what.’

  He turns and starts to walk towards the plane.

  ‘True,’ I say. ‘And you seem to have made a point of it.’

  He stops, turns slowly and comes back.

  ‘We tried getting it across for forty-six years! We presented two thousand absolutely precise predictions of trends and individual events of national and international significance. In us, Denmark possessed an instrument the likes of which no government, no nation, had ever seen before! And we were ignored. Smothered by Thorkild Hegn and the security services. Fobbed off with subsistence allowances!’

  His injured vanity has a particular ring to it, one with which I am familiar. From our rounds of questioning. From the university. From everywhere in society’s upper echelons. And most of all from myself.

  ‘You sold out,’ I say. ‘What was your share?’

  He steps up close, the regal aura now stripped away.

  ‘The manor,’ I tell him. ‘The Bentley, the jet. Kirsten Klaussen bought Bagsværd Church. Henrik Kornelius built a monastery to the tune of a hundred million. You bagged more than you were ever worth. You’re the ones indebted, not us.’

  At short range he’s got the speed of a cat. I’ve no time to react before he’s got me by the throat and pulled me towards him, against the fence.

  ‘Crawl back, Susan,’ he says calmly. ‘Crawl back to your little wormhole. Put some family entertainment on the DVD player. Wait and see.’

  My movements are measured. It’s something I learned early on and later refined in the labs, among the pipettes and the radium salts, the Mettler weighing scales. Seamlessly and without a fuss, I unbutton his jacket, slip my hand down his trouser front, inside his underpants, and take hold of his testicles. They are thick with hair, like the skin of lion.

  Then I squeeze. Hard.

  His knees buckle, and he lets go of my throat immediately. The woman in the riding boots and the man who drove my car are already stepping towards us.

  I squeeze again.

  ‘Tell them to stay back,’ I say.

  He can’t speak, but raises his hand. The man and the woman halt. I lean forward into his face.

  ‘Where did the money come from, Andreas?’

  He says nothing. I squeeze.

  ‘Enough, please!’

  ‘The money, Andreas. Where did it come from?’

  His voice is a whisper now:

  ‘Gold.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We predicted the price of gold would go up.’

  ‘Explain. The only gold I know is my wedding ring.’

  ‘The Nixon Shock. Nixon suspended the convertibility of the dollar into gold. Gold had been the international standard since the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. We knew the price was going to skyrocket. So we bought. And waited. And then we borrowed, and bought again.’

  Now I understand.

  ‘It must have been the easiest thing in the world,’ I say. ‘If you’d played the stock markets or speculated in property investment they’d have been able to trace it all back to you. But this was easy. How much did you make, Andreas? A billion kroner? Ten billion?’

  The next moment, two things happen that only he and I register. The first thing is that his eyes glaze over. Like my caramel potatoes the instant the liquid evaporates. The second thing is that he gets an erection against my forearm, like a cylinder of granite heated up over a Bunsen burner.

  ‘Come with me,’ he says.

  At first I can’t hear what he says, and when he repeats the words I can’t understand him. Everything around us is as if turned to stone: the woman in the riding boots, the man in black, the airport staff, the Lear jet, Kastrup Airport.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Brazil.’

  I stare into his face. And then I cotton on.

  ‘What you want, Andreas, is for me to go with you now, and once a week hang you up between two palm trees, wind a twine tightly around your balls and thrash you with a rhino whip. Is that right?’

  He nods and emits a gasp.

  I’ve worked with candour all my life. Nevertheless, one can always be surprised.

  ‘Andreas,’ I say, ‘regrettably, I haven’t the time. But having met you, I will say that across the globe – even, I’m sure, in Bahia – there will be women who will be more than pleased to help you out without charge.’

  His eyes clear. He returns to reality.

  I release my grip. He staggers backwards, but remains standing, rooted to the spot, as if unable to leave.

  And then it all recedes. I keep my gaze fixed on his. How will he take his leave? People react in different ways when they’ve laid themselves bare: some with anger, some with shame, others by pretending it didn’t happen.

  He runs a hand through his lion’s mane and smiles. This time it’s a deeper smile. Of relief, almost. Perhaps even gratitude.

  ‘Farewell, Susan Svendsen.’

  And with that, he turns and strides towards his plane.

  I go up to the man in black and put out my hand. He places the car keys in my palm.

  I turn to the woman in the riding boots. Two women whose hands have gripped the same hairy bollocks in the space of twenty-four hours owe each other a sisterly nod of acknowledgement at least.

  ‘What happened to your pregnancy?’ she says.

  ‘Do you know anything about quantum physics at all?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Quantum physics operates with a function it calls psi. It doesn’t stand for any physical phenomenon as such. It’s used in calculations, and once it’s worked its little miracles it disappears again.’

  I get into the car.

  Behind me, Andreas Baumgarten’s Lear jet taxis towards the runway.

  37

  I’VE PICKED LABAN and the twins up at the house on Evighedsvej, and in the car I’ve told them about my encounter with Andreas Baumgarten. The tale has made them silent and pensive.

  We pull up at the gate outside the private area between Svanemøllen and Tuborg Havn, where less than forty-eight hours ago I conversed with Keld Keldsen.

  The same girl is sitting in the glass-fronted kiosk.

  One cannot help but notice t
hat the alertness Keldsen and I awakened in her has failed to persist. She looks bored to death.

  I get out of the car. On the other side of the gate I catch a glimpse of four Rolls-Royces and a greater number of Mercedes than I’ve ever seen before in one place, not to mention a Ferrari and a Lamborghini, two Lotuses and a Morgan three-wheeler with wooden coachwork.

  ‘We’re looking for someone to take us out to the islands,’ I tell the girl.

  She looks up and recognises me. Her deep-seated fatigue instantly gives way to panic, which, while hardly a pleasant experience for her, nonetheless seems more in keeping with her tender age.

  She glances at the Volvo. Presumably to see who my new driving instructor is.

  Laban and the twins get out and smile. Laban’s smile is the broadest. He steps towards her window, as if he just bought the car park and all that goes with it and is now brimming with the pride of newfound ownership.

  ‘My name’s Laban Hegn,’ he says. ‘Thorkild Hegn’s son. A pleasure to meet you.’

  The girl’s paralysis abates. She returns his smile.

  ‘Allow me to introduce Thit and Harald. Thorkild’s grandchildren. It’s his seventy-fifth birthday today. We’re arranging a surprise for him.’

  Thit and Harald shuffle dutifully towards the glass front, penning the girl in behind three smiles as wide as a football field.

  She lifts a trembling finger and points at me.

  ‘What about her? I’ve got to account for everyone who goes in.’

  ‘This is Susan,’ says Laban. ‘Our driver. And caddy.’

  ‘But she hasn’t got a driving licence.’

  The information mystifies Laban somewhat, but he nods reassuringly.

  ‘Thank you so much for telling us,’ he says. ‘We’ll make sure to keep her off the roads until she has.’

  The gate opens. We get back in the car with Laban at the wheel, and roll gently in among the thoroughbreds to park discreetly at the far end, as if the Volvo might somehow be embarrassed. Behind us is a Bentley with room enough inside for someone to put it on chocks and use it for a bungalow.

  ‘Caddy, indeed!’ I snort.

  ‘We’re in the middle of divorce,’ says Laban. ‘I’m practising social intercourse as a single. How come she thinks you haven’t got a licence?’

  I say nothing.

  We get out. A little green speedboat is already waiting for us. On the jetty is a uniformed boatsman, rigidly standing at ease.

  Something tells me to turn round and go back to the girl in the kiosk. She nods, on her guard and yet friendly. Laban has shouldered responsibility and promised her we live in the best of all worlds.

  ‘Which car is Hegn’s?’

  ‘He flew in today.’

  ‘In the helicopter?’

  ‘I think I saw his little jet.’

  ‘He must have been in a hurry,’ I say. ‘To get his presents.’

  She gazes dreamily in the direction of Laban.

  ‘He must be gorgeous to work for.’

  ‘Absolutely lush,’ I tell her.

  The Kronholm Islets lie between the Middelgrund sea fort and the island of Hven, in the Øresund that separates Denmark and Sweden. Their name has always been familiar to me. But it’s only now as we approach that I actually see them.

  Most conspicuous is the wind farm, and then the so-called Conch, a seashell-like structure of five twisting storeys that looks like it was washed up onto the beach. Beyond are hangars, storage facilities and a small control tower. Two large cranes preside over an area that looks like it’s being filled in.

  I refrain from asking questions. Our boatsman doesn’t seem like the tour-guide type. Laban believes that what fuels the march of history are the works of the great composers. I believe it to be natural science. Everything else going on in society is mere diversion.

  But still the matter remains in the air. And of course it is Harald who fills us in.

  ‘I did an Internet search. The Kronholm Islets were sold off to a consortium when Danish conservation laws were changed and the protection of coastal areas was relaxed last year. Since then the birds have been told to move, huge areas have been filled in and construction projects carried out, including a landing strip, the wind farm, the buildings we can see and a golf course. The case goes all the way back to 1988. The Ministry of the Environment set up a committee to control the selling-off of waterfront areas by Copenhagen City Council. One of their aims was to prevent the sale of the Øresund islands. In early May 1989, the committee tabled a report containing an absolutely brilliant proposal, one of the most carefully crafted in the history of Danish government, according to Wikipedia. It concerns the administration of forty-two kilometres of quay-side and forty kilometres of coastline over a period of thirty years, and included plans for sixteen thousand new homes and twenty-five thousand jobs, as well as securing access to the city’s watersides for ordinary Copenhageners. But the proposal was rejected. The council went forward with its investment projects, a process that peaked with the repeal of coastal protection laws and the selling-off of the Kronholm Islets. The very rich are few and far between in Denmark. They need reservations. Kronholm is intended to be just such a place. The price was four billion kroner, making it the most expensive piece of land in the country in terms of cost per square metre.’

  We gawp at him. There is a part of every parent that never quite recovers from their children learning to walk and all of a sudden being able to construct and utter two comprehensible sentences.

  A golf cart is waiting for us. It, too, is green, as are the uniforms worn by its driver and the man next to him. The road rises steeply from the harbour. The islets are naturally flat, so the hills are artificial.

  Close up, the Conch no longer looks like it was washed up. Rather it looms, a five-storey construction of steel and glass, with a ground plan approximating the superellipse.

  The golf course starts right outside the building and occupies the whole islet. Its trees are so tall they must have been planted fully grown. There are several kilometres of flowerbeds, and little Japanese bridges arching over shallow streams. From where we stand I can see two temple pavilions that presumably will offer tea to the weary golfer, served in delicate little cups from the Ming dynasty on which will be written some choice words of wisdom such as True wealth is in the heart.

  But the islets and the golf course have one more thing about them which I note: lots of green men. On the narrow ribbon of asphalt that runs alongside the beach I can see three jeeps, each with two men inside, slowly cruising as if to admire the view. At the Conch’s entrance are two security guards with their hands behind their backs. In the distance, where the golf course ends, I can see a little harbour facility and a short causeway leading to a landing strip, and everywhere – along the jetties, on the causeway itself and dotted about the landing strip – are little green men.

  Their uniforms are the same colour as the grass of the golfing greens. Maybe they’re only here to pick up litter and look after the visitors, and to make sure the birds don’t come back and splatter the Conch with their droppings. But somehow I doubt it. For all their casually luxurious air, the Kronholm Islets seem to be massively monitored.

  Thorkild Hegn is standing fifty metres away with his back turned. The golf cart is electric and silent. He hasn’t seen us yet. He is at the centre of a small group, as he would be at the centre of any group, regardless of its size.

  He steps up to the tee and prepares his drive. For the first time, I sense his physical strength.

  Maybe he has a sudden inkling of our presence. But whatever it is, he straightens up and faces about.

  Physiologically and for legal purposes, the five individuals in his company – three women and two men – are people just like us. And yet they look at us as if we’re from another universe altogether.

  They’re wearing loose-fitting leisure clothes made for all weather, of the kind of quality you never find in shops and which Coco Chanel might ha
ve made exclusively for them if she’d been able to keep herself going another fifty years.

  These are people who can pay their way out of having to associate with the likes of us, which is exactly what they’ve done. But now that we’ve slipped through their finely meshed net, they reveal themselves to have far too much class to let their disappointment show.

  I step forward and give Thorkild Hegn a peck on the cheek.

  ‘Many happy returns,’ I say. ‘And the best of wishes from those members of the Future Commission who are still alive. There aren’t that many left. Two more have shuffled off the coil in the last twenty-four hours.’

  He looks across at the two green men waiting at the cart.

  ‘We’ve written you a birthday song,’ I tell him. ‘Laban’s put music to an excerpt from Andrea Fink’s report on the commission’s prognoses. Would you like us to sing here? Or should we go somewhere else, out of the way?’

  He hands his club to a young female assistant. Her skin glows, a warm ochre. But her eyes are cold. A fetching hard-liner, a Danish-West Indian version of Condoleezza Rice, hard as a coconut.

  He strides off and we follow, his assistant tripping along behind.

  We ascend through the Conch in a glass elevator. The two lower floors are empty, apparently not even furnished yet. But as we pass through the two above I glimpse what I estimate to be about thirty or forty people working in open-plan offices.

  Working on Christmas Day is something I approve of, having done it myself on plenty of occasions. Experimental physics doesn’t much care for public holidays. But the thirty-odd people we now pass on our way up are hardly physicists. For that reason, one can’t help but wonder what exactly they’re doing and why.

  The elevator stops at the fifth floor, the seashell’s upper spiral. We step out into a room approximately eight by eight metres and constructed completely of glass, the curved walls meeting at a point some six metres above our heads.

  The room commands a 360-degree panorama view taking in Copenhagen’s harbour, Hven, Malmö and Falsterbo. The Øresund is calm, the light as sharp as a knife. It feels like you could see all the way to Poland and Oslo if you looked through the tripod telescope at the window.