The Quiet Girl - Peter Hoeg

by Peter Høeg

  The first day when the sun was warm enough to sit outside for fifteen minutes he had crossed the courtyard during the lunch break. He had heard the women's voices from far away. Not the words, but the tone; they were talking about children. They had called to him, and he had seated himself on a bench with them. Their eyes were affectionate and teasing, the kind of risk-free flirting that comes from knowing you have a dependable husband at home. Normally he loved it like a warm bath. One of them had asked: "Why don't you have children?"

  He had noticed her before.

  "I haven't been able to find a woman."

  They smiled, he smiled. They didn't understand that it was true. "That's one reason," he said. "The other is that in a little while we're gone, in a little while the children are old. Just imagine it-- they're eighty years old, their spouses are dead, there are no witnesses to the first thirty years of their lives, and then they're gone. That's the other reason."

  They edged away from him. The woman who had asked the question before spoke again.

  "I thought you were a clown."

  He rose to his feet.

  "I'm a musician," he said. "I have a deal with SheAlmighty. To play all the notes. Including the black ones."

  After that the latent eroticism had cooled. Some of it had heated up again. But things had never been completely the same.

  He placed a book on top of the glass. To reduce evaporation. The book was Jung's memoirs. Jung had written that people seek their spirituality in alcohol. Jung must have known what he was talking about. He must have known how it felt to sit across from two cases of Krug Magnum and be unable to stop after the first case. Alcohol is a violin; it's impossible to leave it alone. He lifted the book and emptied the glass.

  He changed places. So he would be sitting across from the sofa. Across from where KlaraMaria had sat. The first time he saw her.

  10

  It had been exactly one year ago.

  He had returned from a performance a little later than usual; it was April, midnight. The trailer stood on a plot of land near the coastal community of Vedbæk. He had owned the property for twenty years without applying for a building permit. Its twelve thousand square yards of quack grass stretched down to the beach, encircled by fir trees.

  The trailer stood in the middle of the grass; he drove over to it, parked, opened the door, and listened.

  Nature always plays one or more musical themes, or that might just be imagination. That night it was the Ricercare from Ein Musikalisches Offer, orchestrated by Anton Webern with text by Tagore: "Not hammer blows, but the dance of the waves sings small stones into perfection."

  It had been years since Stina had disappeared. She hadn't taken the meaning of life with her--that had begun to wander away of its own accord much earlier. But she had slowed down the process.

  From the trailer came a sound that shouldn't have been there. He ducked out of the car. One can't have twenty years of gentle ascent in show business without becoming a victim of projections.

  He reached the door on all fours. He felt under the trailer for the key; it was gone.

  Someone who had progressed further in his development would have left. Or would have pressed a couple of buttons beside the door. Artist's insurance had given him a direct line to the security services of both Falck and Securitas. But we are no farther than where we are. From under the steps he fished out a thirty-inch pipe from the good old days when they were still made of lead.

  He entered the doorway silently. He could hear one person, a resting pulse between eighty and ninety, a circus dwarf.

  "Come in."

  It was a child, a girl. He didn't know how she had been able to hear him. He walked in.

  She was perhaps eight or nine years old. She hadn't turned on the lights, but the shutters were open; she sat in moonlight, on the sofa, with her legs crossed. Like a little Buddha.

  He stood there and listened. In the history of crime there have been examples of young children working with grown men who had very poor ethics. He didn't hear anything. He sat down across from her.

  "How did you find the key?"

  "I guessed."

  It lay on the table in front of her. He had found such a good crack to hide it in that sometimes he couldn't find it himself. There was no chance that she could have guessed where it was hidden.

  "How long have you been here?"

  "Not very long."

  "How did you get here?"

  "By bus and train."

  He nodded.

  "Of course," he said. "Around midnight a big city lies wide open. For a little eight-year-old girl."

  "Nine," she said. "And they're free. The bus and train. When you're under twelve."

  Something was wrong with her system. Her intensity didn't match her age.

  Not that other children didn't have energy. He had lived in the midst of the other artists' children for thirty-five years. Children woke up at six-thirty in the morning and shifted directly into fourth gear. Fourteen hours later they rushed straight into sleep at more than a hundred miles an hour without decelerating. If one could attach electrodes and draw energy directly from children, one could make a fortune.

  But the systems of those children had been unfocused; it had been a flea circus. The girl in front of him was utterly composed. "I've seen you in the circus. I could see that it would be good for you to talk with me."

  He didn't believe his own ears. She spoke like a queen. Without taking his eyes off her, he found the drawer of opening-night gifts with his right hand. He opened it, and put a two-pound box of Neuhaus chocolates on the table.

  "Have a child-molester candy," he said. "Why would it be good for me,'

  "You have a sick heart."

  She was deadly serious.

  She opened the candies. Closed her eyes while the chocolate melted in her mouth.

  "Maybe you're a doctor?" he said. "What's wrong with my heart?"

  "You have to find her, the woman. Who left you. And that's just the beginning."

  There were no letters. No pictures she could have seen. Not five people who would remember anything. And none of them would have told it to a child.

  "Where are your parents?"

  "I don't have any."

  Her voice was as unconcerned as a loudspeaker announcement.

  "Where do you live?"

  "I promised not to tell."

  "Who did you promise?"

  She shook her head.

  "Don't push me," she said. "I'm only nine years old."

  Just a fraction of his attention was on her words. He tried to determine her musical key. It wasn't constant. Something happened to it whenever she wasn't speaking. He didn't know what it was. But it was something he had never heard before.

  "Where did you get my address?"

  She shook her head. He noticed an anxiety in himself that he didn't understand. He let his hearing become unfocused, spread it out, scanned the surroundings.

  He heard Strand Road. The waves and the gravel at the edge of the water. The wind in the fir trees. In the withered grass. Nothing else. It was just the two of them.

  "Play for me," she said.

  He sat down at the piano. She followed him. Took the chocolates along. She curled up in the easy chair and pulled a blanket over her.

  He played the Ricercare, the entire piece, perhaps nine minutes.

  She had stopped chewing. She sucked in the tones just as fast as they left the piano.

  When he had finished she waited for a long time, longer than a concert audience. Longer than people usually do.

  "Did you compose that?"

  "Bach."

  "Is he in the circus too?"

  "He's dead."

  She considered that. Took another piece of chocolate.

  "Why don't you have any children?"

  She reached out one hand and turned on a lightbulb. It was placed behind a piece of glass with a matte finish. On the glass plate was a child's drawing. Fastened with metal clam
ps. For years he had received hundreds of drawings each month. He had installed a place to hang them, and each week had changed the drawing. Sometimes more often.

  "I haven't been able to find a woman who wanted to be a mother."

  She looked at him. It was the most aggressive gaze he had met in any child. Perhaps in any human being.

  "You're lying. And to a small child at that."

  He felt his anxiety increase.

  "I could move in," she said.

  "This is all the space I have. And I don't have much money at the moment."

  "I don't eat very much."

  He had sat across from all kinds of children. Juvenile offenders, fifteen-year-old desperadoes who had double-edged daggers strapped to their legs under camouflage trousers and suspended sentences for violent crimes against innocent people. That hadn't been a problem. He'd had them on a short leash the whole time. This was something different. He started to perspire.

  One moment her face was pure and austere as an angel's. Then it broke into a demonic smile.

  "I'm testing you," she said. "I'm not going to move in. You wouldn't be able to take care of a child. It's not true either that I don't eat. I eat like a horse. The matron calls me 'The Tapeworm.'"

  She had risen from the chair.

  "You can drive me home now."

  * * *

  She didn't talk on the way, except to give directions about where to go. She was as concise as a rally navigator; from Strand Road they turned inland via Skodsborg Road.

  The road ran along the border between the city and the woods, between the highway and deserted stretches, between row houses and country estates. They drove across Frederiksdal.

  "Turn right," she said.

  They drove down along the lake. After half a mile she signaled him to stop.

  It was a stretch without any houses.

  They sat silently beside each other. The girl stared up into the night sky.

  "I'd like to be an astronaut," she said. "And a pilot. What did you want to be? When you were little?"

  "A clown."

  She looked at him.

  "That's what you became. That's important. That a person becomes what they most want to be."

  Somewhere deep in the night sky a dot of light moved. Perhaps it was a shooting star, perhaps a spacecraft, perhaps an airplane.

  "I'll drive you all the way home," he said.

  She got out of the car, he opened his door. When he got to the other side, she was gone.

  He felt with his hearing. Behind him were rows of small houses leading toward Bagsværd, behind them the night traffic on the main highways. To his right, the wind in Lyngby Radio's installations. From the lake, the sound of the last ice that had broken up and was tinkling at the shore, like ice cubes in a glass. Ahead of him, dogs had awakened one another somewhere around the regatta pavilion. He heard the rushes rustling. The night creatures. The wind in the trees in Slotspark. In just one place, a voice in a garden. An otter fishing near the canal connection to Lyngby Lake.

  But no sound of the girl. She was gone.

  A powerful motor started up from somewhere just inside the forest nursery. He started to run. Although tragically out of condition, he had it in him to do one hundred meters in less than thirteen seconds. He made it up the steep slope just as the car drove by. A woman sat at the wheel. Perhaps someone with very refined hearing would have been able to hear the girl curled up in the backseat. He could not. Nevertheless, he noted the license plate number. He pulled out his fountain pen and a card.

  He walked back and forth along the lake for nearly fifteen minutes. In order to try to hear her. In order to catch his breath. He succeeded in neither.

  He got into the car. Dialed his father's number. Maximillian answered immediately. His father whispered.

  "I'm at the casino; you're not allowed to have cell phones turned on. Why the hell are you calling me--did you wet your bed?"

  "Despite your decrepitude," said Kasper, "can you still get into the central registry for the Department of Motor Vehicles?"

  He gave Maximillian the number. The line went dead.

  He had driven home slowly.

  11

  A sound shattered his memories and restored the trailer; it was the telephone. At first there was only a hoarse breathing on the line, as if the caller needed thirty seconds to recoup the oxygen it cost to make such an effort.

  "I'll be completely well on Friday," said Maximillian. "I've found the best Filipino healer--he gets marvelous results. I'm having him flown here. Within a week, I'll be checked out of the hospital."

  Kasper didn't say anything.

  "What are you blubbering about?" asked Maximillian. "Next summer we'll be doing cartwheels on the beach."

  There was quiet on the line.

  "The license plate number," said the sick man. "That you gave me. It's a restricted number. In the central registry. Described as 'stolen' and 'investigation in progress.' With a link to the police commissioner. And the Intelligence Service."

  The hoarse breathing became labored for a few seconds.

  "Josef Kain?" asked Kasper.

  As a boy he had learned great things about improvisation from his father. Maximillian Krone had been able to get up from a devastating quarrel with Rasper's mother, or a twelve-course dinner with his hunting pals that had lasted six hours, and go straight into court or straight into the Industrial Council.

  But now he was silent.

  Father and son listened to each other in silence.

  "The occult," said Maximillian. "That was supposedly part of the reason they established Department H. Damn. It shows you how lily-livered the police are becoming."

  "And is it found in the circus?"

  "It isn't found anywhere."

  "There was a woman. Both you and Mother mentioned her. Even at that time she was old. Something about birds. And a remarkable ability to remember things."

  His father didn't seem to hear him.

  "Vivian is standing here beside me," said Maximillian. "She says you and I should talk together. 'Why the hell should I talk with that idiot,' I say. 'He collapses. He's as soft as shit.' But she insists."

  "She says you're sick."

  "She's the head of the hospice program. She has a professional interest in convincing people that they are at death's door."

  The hoarse breathing again became labored.

  "She wants to talk to you."

  The receiver changed hands.

  "There was no Lona in the Midwives Association register," said the woman. "But I had a thought. There was a midwife whose name may have been Lona. It was fifteen years ago. Quite young. Talented. A lot of original ideas. Very critical of the system. Led efforts to establish experimental birth environments. The environment rooms here at Rigshospital. The underwater-birth rooms in Gentofte. At some point she completed medical studies. Became a very young chief physician. Obstetrics. That's why I didn't think of her as a midwife. Very aware of economic issues. Left her position at the hospital. Worked first for the pharmaceutical industry. Still does, as far as I know. In addition, opened a very exclusive--and well-patronized-- maternity clinic in Charlottenlund. Could it be her?"

  "What was her last name?"

  "It's so long ago. I think it was Bohrfeldt."

  Kasper looked at his knuckles. They were white like a medical-school skeleton. He loosened his grip.

  "I don't know," he said. "It's not too likely. But thanks very much."

  He hung up.

  * * *

  There was nothing in the ordinary telephone directory. But he found the address in the Yellow Pages; it was the only listing under "Maternity Clinics."

  It was at the beginning of Strand Road. The ad showed a vignette of the building. He unfolded KlaraMaria's drawing and placed it beside the telephone book. She had included many details. The stairway curving up toward what must have been the main entrance of a mansion. The number of windows. The characteristic way each window was d
ivided into six panes.

  The address had five telephone numbers listed: main office, on call, pediatrician, labs, infirmary.

  For a moment he considered calling the police. Then he rang for a taxi.

  From the small cabinet above the toilet he took out a large bottle of pills; from the bottle he took two pills, as big as communion wafers, twelve hundred milligrams of caffeine in each, with warm greetings on the prescription from La Mour, the Royal Theater's physician. He filled a glass with water. In fifteen minutes the pills would commence spreading an outer layer of big-band wakefulness over the inner counterpoint of alcohol and fatigue.

  Just to be sure, he took out two more pills. He gave a toast in the mirror. To all the doctors who, like Lona Bohrfeldt, help us into the world. Those at the Rigshospital hospice, who go with us out of it. And those like La Mour, who help us to endure the waiting time.

  A vehicle turned from the Ring Road. It couldn't be a taxi because he thought he heard twelve cylinders. But it slowed down, searching. He swallowed the tablets with water. Put the glass upside down on the shelf.

  Twice he had shared a dressing room with Jacques Tati, the second time in Stockholm after the master had lost everything on Playtime and had gone back to variety shows. After removing his makeup he had placed his glass upside down; Kasper had asked why.

  "The dust, la poussère."

  "We'll be back tomorrow."

  The mime had smiled. The smile had not reached his eyes.

  "We can hope so," he said. "But can we plan on it?"

  12

  It was the first time he had seen a Jaguar used as a taxi. The rear door burst open by itself, the backseat took him into its embrace like a woman. The car smelled like an expensive harness, but the light was strange. The driver was a young man wearing a clerical collar. Kasper tried to determine what sort of man he was by his sound. Probably from a small farm on Mors Island, studying theology without any financial help from home. Theology department during the day, taxi at night, and a use for every krone he could scrape together.

  "Strand Road," said Kasper. "And as far as I'm concerned you don't have to start the meter."