The Quiet Girl - Peter Hoeg

by Peter Høeg

  "I'll appeal," he said. "To the district court in Granada. It will be several years before the case comes up."

  "They will charge you with attempted bribery of the public prosecutor in Torremolinos. Bribery cases have first priority. After the big scandals in the nineties. Our lawyers say you'll be sentenced this summer."

  He didn't say anything. There was nothing to add.

  "It's a desperate situation," she said. "Nevertheless, there may still be hope. We've talked about it. The sisters feel they know you. There's nothing they would rather do than help a great artist. What if powers within the Church interceded for you? If we brought the verdict from Granada to the Supreme Court in Madrid. It doesn't mete out punishment. But it makes the final decision in determining guilt. What if the patriarch from the patriarchate in Paris went to the pardon office in Madrid on your behalf? The king has the power to give pardons. What if we could document that you had donated most of the defrauded funds to our convent? And if all of us here prayed intercessory prayers for you?"

  He was flooded with gratitude. What streamed toward him from this total stranger was some of the Christian love for your neighbor that flowed from the cantatas.

  He knelt down and laid his forehead against her hand. Old-fashioned, perhaps. But for one whose love is spontaneous there are no limits.

  "I think we'll do it," she said. "There's just one little thing we'll request. In return."

  He stiffened. Slowly he raised himself backward onto the chair.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  "My basic traumas are exposed,"

  "The sisters and I," she said, "are self-reliant. But we need a man."

  "Love is never unconditional," he said. "There's always some small thing."

  "We're worried about the children," she said.

  * * *

  "A year ago," she said, "one of the novices in our lay order disappeared, Sister Lila; she worked closely with me, caring for the children. She was dragged into an automobile, blindfolded, and driven away. She was gone for two days and nights. She had been tied up and mistreated. Beaten. Questioned about the children. After two days she was driven to Amager Commons and left there. She still hasn't recovered completely. A number of talents lie in what you call the silence. We're afraid somebody wants to exploit those talents."

  "The police," he said.

  "They're involved. The Institute has been identified as a possible terrorist target. Which means there are contingency plans. And a patrol car drives past our entrance twice a week. That's all the protection one can get. It's quite understandable. There's nothing concrete to go on."

  "Where do the children come from?"

  "Families connected to the lay order in various parts of the world where the Russian Orthodox Church has a long tradition: Jerusalem, Ethiopia, Australia. Some places in the East. France. The families take no vows and don't wear habits. They can choose how close their connection to the convent will be."

  "What do the children do here?"

  She looked out the window. As if she were waiting for SheAlmighty to prompt her.

  "We could call it a training camp," she said. "An expanded international Sunday school. We bring them here once a year. We're finished for this year. It's next year that frightens us."

  He tried to get past her voice. Right now it was hoarse, coarse-sounding, like fine shingle on a conveyor belt in a quarry. And it was definitive. A voice for final announcements, blessings, or excommunication. He could not open it.

  "We're a modern convent. We're well prepared for many challenges. Very many, in fact. But not for this one."

  "You'll have protection," he said. "I can arrange a contact."

  She came around the desk, drew a chair over to him, and sat down. She was very close; he wanted to edge away. But the signal from his brain to his muscles was poorly transmitted.

  "These aren't ordinary children," she said. "The people we're dealing with aren't ordinary criminals either. We don't know what's out there. But it's far-reaching."

  He succeeded in pushing his chair backward.

  "I'm an artist," he said. "I have my public to think about. I'm drowning in debt. I have contracts for the next two and a half years. Outside Denmark."

  He didn't know if she heard him.

  "In the Russian Orthodox Church we work with role models," she said. "That's what the saints are. Following the Savior's example, they allow others to feed them in order to wander among sinners and thieves. In the East they're called bodhisattvas. What we need here is a little saint. A reflection of a saint. Someone who will allow these people to contact him. Whoever they may be. Someone who will solve the situation. Mediate between us and the public authorities. That's what we need."

  He moved his chair still farther back.

  "You need a police informant," he said. "I'm a man with an international career. And at that point I'll be touring on the Côte d'Azur."

  "Not if you break your unfulfilled contracts. That would put a stigma on you. Publicly. You'd seem like a fallen angel. They might try to use you. Whoever they are. You're known for being good at working with children."

  The atmosphere was homelike. Like the Goldberg Variations. She spoke as if they had known each other for a very long time. She spoke like a big sister. Deadly frank.

  "They're the two biggest variety-show companies in Spain," he said. "And on the Côte d'Azur. They would file a claim for damages."

  "For a very large sum," she said.

  "I'd be blacklisted," he said.

  "In most of the world."

  They laughed at each other.

  "So I come here to the Institute," he said. "It's one year later. I've killed my career."

  "A mercy killing. It's about to die anyway. The spiritual part of you is searching for something deeper."

  "My future is about to fold. Lawsuits being prepared here and in Spain. So I come to the Institute. And then what?"

  "You wait. We come and find you. Or KlaraMaria does. She's very taken with you. I was there in the Circus Building when she saw you the first time. We almost didn't get her home with us. You will be nearby. When we need you. And you will seem like a bankrupt soul. They will contact you. Maybe we can find a way to point you out."

  "You'll give me a Judas kiss."

  "We'll just glance in your direction. Maybe they will come. Maybe they won't. The crucial thing is that you're nearby. When we ask for help."

  "What kind of help?"

  She shook her head.

  "I'm the hegumena. That's the same as the abbess. And from time to time I function as the staretza, the spiritual director. But this business here. This isn't my area. However, the sisters believe in you."

  "And afterward?"

  "There are two possibilities. We follow the plan. Intercession. Write to the pardon office. Contribute to your fine from our charity fund. Move heaven and earth. From the White Russian Metropolitan to the Danish Ministry of Justice. You apologize. An out-of-court settlement is made. You complete your tour belatedly. You're back onstage."

  "And the other possibility?"

  "Is that it's not enough. Nobody, not the variety shows nor the hacienda nor the tax administration, will agree to a settlement. So you end up with five years in Alhaurin el Grande after all."

  She wasn't smiling anymore.

  "And when I'm sitting there," he said, "in the long Andalusian winter nights, what will I tell myself was the reason for all of this?"

  'The silence," she said. "Was the reason for all of it."

  * * *

  She accompanied him downstairs; he was grateful, because he couldn't have found the way by himself. He had lost his sense of direction, externally and internally.

  They walked through the industrial kitchen and a canteen. The candles had replaced themselves and received reinforcement from the moon.

  "The terrace," she said. "The dining hall."

  She opened a door that led out to the cloister garden. The sound there made you want to
settle down on a stone bench and stay, even now, in forty-six-degree weather.

  The garden was surrounded by four wings; the fourth wing was a church, diminutive and well kept, like a large community-garden house. The church was built in the form of a cross and had a large onion dome that glistened in the moonlight.

  He listened into the scene; a caring tone pervaded everything. "It's part of our training," she said. "One tries to sanctify all the everyday things. The garden. The maintenance. One prays while sitting on the toilet."

  He felt a longing begin to grow. Probably in his own heart, but it was so far-reaching that it spread to the surroundings. Like a dissonant tension.

  "For most of my life," he said, "I've searched for silence. Within oneself, and between people. I know it's to be found. I've never been totally within it myself, but I know it exists. You have it. You are standing in it; I can hear that your voice comes out of the silence. Also the little girl, KlaraMaria. She's close to the same silence. I want to be in there. Otherwise I'll go crazy."

  She listened to him. He felt his knees knocking against each other slightly.

  "It's undoubtedly true," she said, "that you will go crazy if you don't find the silence."

  She closed the garden door; they walked toward the front exit. He held back. He was almost paralyzed with anger. She was a Christian. But not one compassionate word had she given him. Not one blessing. Not even a little kiss on the cheek.

  Nevertheless, he had to listen to her body. She walked the way Ekaterina Gordeeva had danced on ice. With a twelve-year-old's joy in moving. The young figure skater had performed a number with the state circus during his three seasons in Moscow. Still, the woman in front of him had a different kind of flow. As if she weren't camped directly in her body, but around it. He had listened to bodies all his life; he had never heard anything like it.

  "The African woman," he said. "She threatened me. To make me stay away."

  "It's my understanding that in both the circus and the theater it's common to have an audition. In order to find those who take the profession seriously."

  He stopped short. His body grew icy. In spite of that, he managed to make his voice purr like a Siamese.

  "To be the abbess," he said, "must demand a very high level of trustworthiness."

  She turned toward him. He had sat in cafes in southern Europe and listened to nuns walking past. Most of them had a great deal of Monteverdi from the top of their heads and down to their heart. But below that, they were laced up tightly. The woman ahead of him was a different phenomenon.

  "Ideally," she said. "In reality, we're all human."

  "So I'm going to ask you to put it in writing," he said. "Everything. The bishop and the patriarch. And the intercession and the five million."

  They were back in the attic room. She wrote fluidly, with total concentration, went into the next room, a photocopy machine hummed; she came back, gave him the document. He read it and signed it. He'd had many contracts in his life, but none like this.

  "Do you trust me?" she asked.

  He nodded.

  * * *

  She opened the front door. Held out her hand. He shook it. They stood there in the doorway.

  The sounds around them began to change. First they became clearer. He heard his own body, and hers. He noticed the scarcely audible whisper of an electronic device on standby. He heard the building, the constant, minimal settling of stone and cement. The vibration of sleeping people.

  He heard the sounds harmonize. Transpose into the same key. He was witness to some form of orchestration.

  He could no longer hear the woman's keynote. He looked at her. She had become colorless. He knew they were standing upright and were both on the same journey, in through all the sound boxes and wind instrument bells, toward where he had always wanted to go, toward silence.

  Longing and terror hit him simultaneously, like a single beat on a kettledrum. He nearly let out a scream. At that instant, the phenomenon ended.

  He leaned against the wall. It took a while before he was able to speak.

  "A year is a long time," he said. "You might forget the agreement."

  "We may also remember it," she said.

  "You may also be mistaken. Maybe no one is after the children. In that case, I will have ruined my life."

  "What has characterized great men and women," she said, "is that when it came down to it, they were willing to put everything on one number on the roulette wheel. Our Savior's number. And with no guarantee that it would win."

  The room spun around before Kasper's eyes, like a carousel, a cloister carousel.

  "It will be a long year," he said. "And not the easiest one in my life. Do you have any advice?"

  She looked at him.

  "Have you ever tried to pray?"

  "I've asked for things. Most of my life."

  "That's why you haven't gotten farther."

  Anger took away his breath again.

  Her sound was now like the aria from the Goldberg Variations. Familial. He could tell that she liked him. As few, perhaps very few, people could. It was what he had noticed with KlaraMaria. With Stina. A person who could tolerate the noise from his system. And more than tolerate it.

  Love makes people equal. For a moment he and she were completely on the same level.

  "To whom shall I pray?" he asked. "Who says there's someone out there? Who says the universe isn't just one big hurdy-gurdy?"

  "Maybe it's not necessary to pray to anyone. The early desert mothers said that God is without form, color, or content. Perhaps prayer isn't a matter of praying to anyone. Perhaps it's an active way of giving up. Maybe that's precisely what you need: to give up, without going under."

  She opened the door.

  "The words could be anything whatsoever," she said, "as long as they speak to the heart. For example, they could be from Bach's cantatas."

  He noticed a movement; the African stood behind him.

  * * *

  She accompanied him to the gate and opened it for him. He turned and looked at the building.

  "The guest wing," said the African.

  The building had three stories; he counted seven windows on each floor, each with its small balcony.

  "Very hospitable," he said.

  "Philoxenia. In love for the stranger one finds love for Christ."

  He began walking toward Frederiksdal Road. She stood watching him through the open gate.

  He experienced her tone, her reaction to him. What she saw made her sound like a person standing at the roulette table, after Rien ne va plus, calculating the odds, and knowing that since it's roulette, the odds are less than 50 percent in any case.

  Or perhaps it was his imagination; on cold moonlit nights especially, the world easily becomes a screen on which each of us plays our own home video. He got into his car; he had always regarded his automobile as a separate, but utterly safe, part of his living room, with two easy chairs and a sofa.

  * * *

  Even when he had reached Klampenborg and the Elise was warm and there were other night owls on the road, he continued to hear, from the seats and motor and body of the car and from the traffic and the suburbs around him, the utterly simple and yet incredibly complex theme of the Goldberg Variations. As it begins to sound when you have gotten well into the variations and begin to notice that now you cannot leave, now Bach has hold of you, now you must go on, regardless of where it leads you.

  PART 3

  1

  Copenhagen Dolce Vita was located on the ground floor of a building that faced what had been Kongens Nytorv, the city's most elegant square.

  Kasper had never doubted that spiritual longing and food belonged together, and that in principle there were two approaches: One could either starve or eat oneself toward Paradise.

  Great religious traditions had perfected both extremes. The early desert fathers and mothers had sometimes looked as if their skeletons were outside their clothing; the Taoists had said, "Empty the
mind and fill the belly," and a series of smart Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra stars had looked like managers of the Gluttons Club. Buddha had proposed a path between the two extremes, and that was what Kasper was looking for, this evening and many times before, as he sat at Bobech Leisemeer's restaurant, where the food was like the circus in the old days--thoroughly spiritualized, shocking, and on the border between equilibristic and unconscionable.

  Nevertheless, a point between the heart and the solar plexus would not relax, and never would relax in this life. A point which knows that in an environment like this, surrounded by gold and white and damask and annual incomes never below a million kroner, if one has been born a Gypsy, one must have come to the wrong place.

  But still he had kept coming back. Because the food was the way it was, because one who seeks the highest must not leave any path untried. And because Kasper had always been able to hear himself in the chef: a proletarian boy born to play the buffoon at fairs who had to spend the rest of his life trying to understand why fate had dressed him in a white uniform and chef's hat, made him the darling of the upper class, and set him up as some sort of high priest before an altar to food.

  Kasper looked out over the water.

  * * *

  He had awakened two hours earlier; it was pitch-dark around him. He climbed down from the loft and went over to the trailer. No one was inside. He tried to let himself in, but there was steel wire on the door handle; he struck a match, and saw the wire had a lead seal marked Copenhagen police.

  He broke the seal. Inside the trailer he struck another match.

  They had cleaned up after themselves. The way a corpse looks nice on the outside after embalming, but there's no longer anything inside. His violin was gone, the strongbox had been opened, his papers were gone. Klavierbüchlein was no longer on the shelf.

  But his clothes were still there. He gathered up his suit, shoes, towel, and toiletries. Next he tore a little piece of cardboard from the cover of Carl Nielsen's memoir about his childhood on Funen Island. He turned out the light, walked outside, pressed the piece of cardboard firmly in the door at knee height. Connected the two halves of the seal as well as he could.

  In the lavatory building he took a shower and shaved, first with an electric shaver and then with a safety razor. The face that looked out at him from the mirror was affected by aging and by five to seven thousand complete makeup jobs over thirty years.