by Peter Høeg
By the time Maria and Adonis got there, the building had completely disappeared. It was totally and utterly gone, with not even a chimney sticking up. The moon had set, but in the feeble dawn light the mud shone grayly. The lot was deserted, empty, and incalculably large, and in the empty space above it there still hung a weightless memory of the lost tenement. It was as though it went on living, somewhere else; as though, during the night, some giant had picked it up and hurled it into another dimension—one that occupied the same spot, though on a different plane, as the one where Maria and Adonis stood gazing at the cold gray light of morning; a winter morning in Copenhagen, and the sort of light that is no longer seen but that is the most appropriate for what happens next. Which is, that Adonis looks at Maria. There is no doubt that he wanted her to come with him. After all, he was her father. She could sit in the back of the truck next to her grandparents and the collapsible platform; maybe he could devise a number for her; they could perform together, she and Adonis—wouldn’t that have been beautiful, the dream of father and daughter and grandparents huddling together in the face of 1930s Denmark, after the mother had disappeared, at that. Wouldn’t that have been beautiful. It is how I would like to see things turn out, but it would not have been the truth, and here truth takes precedence over everything, even beauty. What does in fact happen is that Maria turns away. She takes off her police helmet and wipes a brow dampened by the moisture in the air; then she turns away, as though there were no more to this story. But of course there is, there is always a sequel, and most decidedly a sequel to this moment. I am familiar with some of this sequel—the part that follows the progress of Maria’s life—but I know nothing about the immediate aftermath. Whatever happened during that dawn has been forgotten. Maybe they ran, Adonis and Maria; maybe they raced through the narrow, sleeping streets searching for someone—Anna, mother and wife—whom, one assumes, they knew to have vanished, finally and irrevocably. Maybe they even went to the police. It is not unthinkable that Adonis, at any rate, might have done so. Whatever they did, they did not remember it. In their memories, that morning would consist of nothing but the cold and the gray light and the simple fact that Anna had gone, and that gesture of Maria’s. Maria—wiping her brow as she turned away from Adonis Jensen and the silent figures in the truck and made off, through the gradually swelling crowd of sightseers and unemployed workers and message boys and representatives from the child welfare committee and official guardians and newspaper reporters—although these last deemed this event, the sinking of this property, worthy of only the very briefest of mentions.
CARL LAURIDS AND AMALIE
The villa on Strand Drive
Prosperity
1919–1939
CARL LAURIDS AND AMALIE met one warm day in May 1919 on a meadow next to a racecourse outside Copenhagen, from which Carl Laurids had organized a balloon ascent. Well, naturally, a balloon ascent—nothing less would do. The balloon had been constructed at von Zeppelin’s workshops in Friedrichshafen on the shores of Lake Constance and bore a plaque with the inscription “From one sportsman to another,” signed “Ferdinand”—a detail undoubtedly designed to create the impression that what we are dealing with here is quality goods; a product, what is more, of our mighty neighbor Germany, with whom, now that the war is over, we may share everything, even such new, technical advances as this balloon. Even so, there were several guests who, like me, had their doubts as to whether this flamboyant craft really had been a gift from Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin to Carl Laurids. This was the first they had heard of the latter; they knew even less about him than we do. But there he was, in their midst, wearing white tails and a flying helmet, willingly answering any and all questions, except the key question: Where did he come from and where did he get the money to stage such an extravagant event.
Later on, standing on a improvised podium of champagne cases, Carl Laurids gives a speech that has been preserved in the newspaper reports. It was a speech none of those who heard it would ever forget: elegant, incisive, and yet imbued with that remarkable air of composure so characteristic of everything to which Carl Laurids turns his hand—a quality made that much more difficult to understand by the fact that here, on the grass outside the racecourse, he is but nineteen years of age. He closed his speech by saying that this balloon was a symbol of the new century’s acknowledgment that the lighter a thing is, the faster it will rise into the air. After which he was roundly applauded, his words having touched the hearts of his guests—this collection of speculative businessmen and blushing maidens, all of whom had, during the Great War, amassed fortunes from various forms of tin cans; these writers and politicians and actors who, each in his own fashion, earned their livings from singing the praises of progress and modern technology and who were now watching, enraptured, as the balloon was filled with hydrogen, thereby revealing itself to be, not round, but cigar-shaped and topped by a silver-plated cupola. Seeing the glittering reflection of the afternoon sun on this cupola, one young actress was moved to turn to her neighbor—that great author and subsequent Nobel Prize winner Johannes V. Jensen—point at the huge silken structure rising hesitantly off the ground, and say with a giggle, “It looks like that thing men have between their legs.”
Along the side of the balloon, in large letters, ran the legend “Carl Laurids Mahogany. Import—Export.” This event must have represented a major investment, and no small risk, on Carl Laurids’s part. He may indeed have staked his all on this balloon ascent, which was supposed to secure him goodwill, contacts, and a place in the sun. And hence there is something rather sinister about him on this afternoon. Before, during, and after his speech; during all the backslapping and arm-waving; among all these influential men and lighthearted women—on whom, he must have known, his future depended—his smile and the cordial greetings he dispensed to all and sundry seemed touched by the icy indifference of a man who, even amid such an admiring throng, right in the middle of the most decisive moment of his life, is totally alone.
Right from the start, Carl Laurids had had the confidence of his guests. He may even have gained it in the days before he met them for the first time. There is reason for believing that he had already won them over with the invitations he sent out. At first these had elicited chilly smiles: who was this stranger by the name of Mahogany who had the temerity to send invitations to them? Nevertheless, they eventually accepted, thanks to the handwritten invitations, and that surname, Mahogany (recently assumed by Carl Laurids), and to the words “Import—Export”; none of which betokened anything other than precisely that self-assured ruthlessness for which they were all searching and which they had now found in this boy in his white tie and tails, and his flying helmet.
None of those who were present that afternoon had believed in Carl Laurids. They were not really interested in knowing whether the balloon truly was a gift from von Zeppelin, or what Carl Laurids’s airy fortune derived from, or who his family really were. They were interested in something quite different, namely, that very ruthlessness, that overweening belief in oneself, and, perhaps above all else, that coldness about Carl Laurids which every one of them could sense and which filled them with the hope that here, on the champagne cases, was a man who could protect them against the fear which is part of the history of that spring day. Nor were they disappointed, because, from his podium, Carl Laurids let his composure fall upon them like a gentle shower of rain and it was obvious that he understood them; he knew whom he had invited and who had turned up: everyone in Copenhagen and its suburbs who was not afraid to run a risk and whose wealth, like Carl Laurids’s—if it did, in fact, exist—was founded on luck and love, or on property speculation; on absolutely anything other than strong family connections or a sound business or a good education. And even those in the crowd who might possibly have had one of these advantages were, notwithstanding, afraid.
It is not easy for me to describe the fear lurking inside these people. It has no definite form—in the way that, for instance, Car
l Laurids’s balloon has; it is diffuse yet complex; besides which, it lay camouflaged beneath liberally rouged feminine cheeks and tall black moleskin hats and beneath Johannes V. Jensen’s view of history, which he is in the act of enlarging upon to the young actress; the gist of his theory being that when the last Ice Age swept down across Scandinavia, all those people who were small and dark traveled south and became Negroes—not to put too fine a point on it, Negroes—and those who were tall and broad-shouldered and blue-eyed and had hair on their chest headed north to become forefathers to us, who can, without exaggeration, be called the master race and who dare to take risks.
The disquiet that afternoon was caused, among other things, by things outside Denmark going from bad to worse—particularly in Russia—and Germany’s not having as yet signed the peace treaty that would safeguard Danish exports and provide all the Danes with just a smidgen of security; give them a breathing space—right here—after having made their fortunes to the distant musical accompaniment of the shellfire, with the stench of the blood from the trenches in their nostrils. All of that they wanted merely to forget, along with their impoverished beginnings. And it was this forgetfulness which Carl Laurids dispensed to them that day. In the double-testicle-shaped gondola suspended beneath the balloon he had arranged for the serving of a lavish repast, concocted by two French chefs—two international celebrities at whom he fired instructions in authoritative French. The menu consisted of exotic dishes from the remotest colonies, from the very places where wars raged and revolts were staged; from the flashpoints, the sources of all the threats. These dishes were devised and derived from large, dangerous animals, as a way of showing everyone that they could relax; and that is exactly what Carl Laurids said as the last moorings were cast off. He invited them to relax and enjoy this meal; enjoyment is the name of the game on this balloon trip. Now, things might be looking pretty ominous on the international front—that he would be the first to admit—but we have plenty of reason to feel well pleased, he said, and to let our hair down, because we have tamed technology, tamed the forces of nature. With the result that I am able to serve giant crabs from Madagascar and elephant consommé and fillets of bear masked with lobster sauce, and an entire stuffed boa constrictor served in its own skin with a Negro warrior in its mouth, a Negro warrior whom it was in the very act of swallowing at the moment of its death, at the second it succumbed to a rifle bullet—a well-aimed shot that also killed the Negro, the kind of shot that will always occur and redeem the situation, said Carl Laurids. And as for the wine, ladies and gentlemen, it’s champagne, champagne all the way.
His last words were “Eat, drink, and be merry”—and they did not have to be told twice. These words did not seem to shock anyone, apart from us and one of the prostitutes who had been brought up in a religious home. But neither she nor we can help but view this remark as being yet another cool and detached touch of malice on the part of Carl Laurids, who said it knowing full well that he was quoting Christ’s parable of the rich man who decided to eat, drink, and be merry—but whom the Lord warned, tomorrow you die! eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die!
The balloon was equipped with big gas lamps designed to heat the open gondola to room temperature, enclose the guests within a pleasant bell of light, and make them feel that they were floating in a—in all senses of the word—self-sufficient bubble in space. At the last moment, however, just before Carl Laurids lit the lamps, they had a clear view of Copenhagen. Bathed in the rays of the setting sun, as the city was at that moment, it looked like a gold mine—which indeed it was and had proved to be for most of those present. And yet just then every one of them had the feeling that the city was threatening them; that it also had the look of a grave, or a whirlpool, or some huge beast lying in wait, stiff with menace. Then Carl Laurids lit the lamps and invited them to help themselves from the buffet, and they turned toward one another, in relief, feeling that there was no cause for concern when the world and, for that matter, Denmark contained men of Carl Laurids’s caliber, who could mask wild beasts in lobster sauce or cover them with whipped cream or present absolutely anything, anything at all, they thought, on a puff pastry base, even the disturbing fact—which had, until now, been in all their thoughts—that the longshoremen were on strike, despite the eight-hour day, despite the lowering of the voting age, even despite the strike’s having been declared illegal by the permanent arbitration tribunal. One of the members of this tribunal—a representative from the employers’ association—happened to be among those in the gondola; a slightly built fidget of a man who would later that evening confide to his neighbors that he saw himself as an exorcist and that this time he was going to drive out the demons of communism and syndicalism by fining the longshoremen 800,000 kroner—I repeat, eight hundred thousand—many times more than the cost of this balloon trip. But by that time no one was listening to him; up there, as they floated between heaven and earth, all their worries had been thrown overboard along with the first of the balloon’s sandbags.
At the last minute, just before the tall flight of steps leading up to the gondola was rolled away, the last guest arrives—a woman in a white dress, coming toward them across the meadow, fluttering erratically like a leaf caught by the wind. And that is just what she is. She has been caught by the wind, and as she draws nearer, the reason becomes clear: she is thin, alarmingly thin, nothing but skin and bone. And so, weighing next to nothing, she is totally at the mercy of the spring breeze that carries her along, in the direction of Carl Laurids’s searching gaze. She manages to latch on to the steps and, for a split second, hangs there. What she must have seen, at that moment, was those eyes, scrutinizing her from between a flying helmet and a white bow tie. What Carl Laurids saw was a figure reminiscent of the legend, from his childhood, of the White Lady of Mørkhøj. But both must, in addition, have seen something else, because, all at once, Carl Laurids climbs out of the gondola and down the steps, takes her in his arms, and carries her back up the steps, without her offering any resistance. Once they are inside the gondola, the steps are wheeled away and the balloon lifts off. The girl in Carl Laurids’s arms was Amalie Teander, and her search had now led her to him, to no one but him.
* * *
To Amalie, the journey she made as a child from Rudkøbing to Copenhagen had become a triumphal procession. It had been paid for by the Reverend Mr. Cornelius and by other members of the family and by a number of other influential townspeople. The official reason was, of course, that they wanted to redeem the family’s good name, and give Christoffer Ludwig the chance to exercise his entrepreneurial skills elsewhere, and let the children have a change of air, blah, blah, blah. But the real reason why so many dipped into their pockets—including the family’s creditors, who were so stingy that the coins stuck to the lining—was that having Christoffer on their doorstep filled them with a sneaking dread. His presence chafed away at the raw patches on their consciences, reminding them of the spate of newspapers issued after the Old Lady’s funeral. It made them distrust one another, and society, and the little hand and the big one, and their own senses. They would not feel safe until Christoffer was out of sight altogether. It was with no faith in their own schemes that they raised funds for him, found him an apartment in Copenhagen, packed up the family’s few belongings—including the printing press that Frederik Teander had won in a card game; the one that had laid the foundations for the white house and the water closets and the Old Lady’s will—and piled the lot onto the back of a truck, one of the first trucks in Denmark. And even while they were helping Christoffer aboard, and after him his three daughters, and finally Gumma and her tricycle, they kept expecting that something dreadful would happen: that their scheme would somehow go to pieces, and that Christoffer would turn out to have yet another couple of daggers up his sleeve.
Amalie could sense this dread and it made her smile. It enhanced her departure from Rudkøbing, a departure already distinguished by the large crowd it attracted, just as on the day w
hen the Old Lady granted the townspeople a peek at her new water closet. It came at just the right time for Amalie, who now realized that these people would never understand her. What she was thinking on that chilly autumn morning, as she sat in the back of the truck, was that she had deigned to be born in their town, she had descended to mingle with them, in all modesty, and had let their mirrors and windowpanes reproduce her image—her ringlets and her doe eyes—in all modesty. But they had let their chance go by, they had been caught napping, and now it’s all over, it’s time to leave, they’ve missed the train, she has left them—together with a radiantly calm and contented Christoffer, Gumma, and her two sisters, who had, here in the triumphal coach, abandoned themselves to numb despair. The previous day, for the first time in their lives, they had had to do their own shopping. They had returned in tears to the Reverend Mr. Cornelius’s parsonage (where the family was staying while the business and their financial situation and their life in general were being straightened out) and asked Christoffer, through their sobs, “Why must we suffer so and where is Mother and where is the white house and where are all the servants?” Christoffer had spread his arms wide—his movements had grown somewhat capricious and spasmodic—and replied, “Easy come, easy go!” This remark did little to quell their tears, and I, too, find it a bit much. How can anyone who has just lost his wife—a bankrupt, who has frittered away a family business built up over two generations—say such a thing? But Amalie was delighted by it. She savored it as she warmed herself with the thought of how she and Christoffer had worked together on the last issues of the newspaper. And so, as the truck drove away from the town, and her two sisters and Gumma curled up like animals and went to sleep, it was to her father that Amalie related her dreams of the future.
