The Quiet Girl - Peter Hoeg

by Peter Høeg

  "There's a hole in your sound. There are damaged places in all of us. But in you it's huge. Not to compare with Hitler. We should not compare ourselves with the great ones. But big enough. It has something to do with your childhood. It always has something to do with one's childhood. Maybe you grew up poor. Maybe there was no father in the picture. That could explain your lust for money. Longing for power. The hole has something to do with these two things. It turns off the heart. Can you feel the children? Can you remember when you were a child yourself? Did you cut off the little girl's fingers."

  The man's face in the mirror was expressionless. Now his sound was closed, encrypted.

  Franz Fieber entered the room. Pulled the curtains aside. A man was on his way toward the summerhouse. The thickset man with the hearing aid.

  Kasper leaned down. His face was a fraction of an inch away from Kain's.

  "I'm forty-two. Do you know what I've concluded from my life until now? Hell: It's not a place. Hell is transportable. All of us carry it around with us. It opens up and stays with us from the moment we lose contact with our own natural sympathy."

  Kasper remembered the scissors in his hand. He looked at the man's throat. Where the sternocleido muscle passes behind the jawbone. It would take one thrust. The point of the scissors would go through the base of the skull and into the brain. There would be one less black sound hole in the world.

  He closed his eyes. He heard the anger. It was not his. It had entered through a hole in his system. All of us are acoustically perforated, like Swiss cheese. Who has the right to be another's executioner? He straightened up.

  The man in the chair brought a hand to the back of his neck. Looked at his hand. It was red from the henna.

  "It doesn't much matter," said Kain, "who you are. You were dead and buried long ago."

  Kasper felt the pain around his heart. Because--once again--he had failed to reach a fellow human being. With the simplest and most important of all truths.

  Franz Fieber opened a glass door; behind the door a merciful winding staircase descended toward the spot where they had parked the van.

  "Ten minutes in the hair dryer," said Kasper, "and nothing will rub off on your bonnet."

  8

  They drove past Svanemølle Harbor out onto the wharf area itself. They passed warehouses, rows of full-rigged wooden ships. Franz Fieber's eyes kept glancing at the mirrors, scanning the road behind them for pursuers. They reached the promenade and pulled over.

  "Call the police."

  His voice shook.

  "Tell them that you know where the children are. That they should storm the building. You'd be able to get them to do it. You could talk your way into Paradise."

  "And if the children aren't there?"

  The young man slumped. A tone of despondency had begun to pervade his sound profile. Kasper didn't like it. They still had a way to go before reaching the end of the road.

  A patrol car passed them slowly. Three dark-haired young men on a corner withdrew into the darkness. After the car passed they popped up again. They had high energy, like small-time gangsters in embryo. Kasper felt a sudden joy at the cosmos's tendency to create unified entities. As soon as we have built a neighborhood for the best circles and cleansed it of foreign elements, darkness tumbles out of all the corners.

  He listened out over the scene before him. He could hear the last shops with evening hours balancing their cash accounts. He could hear the windmill park outside Lynetten at the northern tip of Amager Island. The seagulls. The deep whisper of turbines at the power station. The late customers at the restaurants. He listened for the true sound structure. Timing is not a specific time; timing is a sound. He would not have been able to explain it, except perhaps to the Blue Lady. Musicality often knows when, but often doesn't know why. It was not yet the moment.

  His hearing was clear because it was evening and because of his hunger. Somewhere Saint Catherine wrote that fasting is an excellent instrument through which to see God. The problem with that aphorism is that what's important is to see God without an instrument.

  He reached back in the van and found a loaf of bread, cheese, pesto. A bottle of springwater. A paring knife. He tore off some pieces of bread and spread them with pesto and cheese on the ledge under the windshield. He handed a piece to Franz Fieber; the young man shook his head.

  "We've done what we could; they're looking for both of us. The people we're after aren't ordinary people; they're devils."

  He opened the Armagnac, took a swig, handed the bottle to Kasper, poured coffee. His hands shook.

  "How does liquor mix with continual prayer?" asked Kasper.

  "What do you mean, man? The Trappists brew beer. The Benedictines make liqueur. Our Savior changed water into wine. And on a night like tonight, what the hell do you want me to do?"

  A new sound was added to the previous collage, the sound of wind in something that might have been telephone wires.

  "I don't know if you're familiar with Parsifal," said Kasper. "If not, I'd recommend that you listen to it. Wagner was in a tight spot. Fleeing from his creditors. That happens to the greatest ones. He was given sanctuary. With a view out to the water. The way we have now. There he wrote Parsifal. There's a wonderful scene. It's Good Friday. Like today. Third act. The castle of the Knights of the Grail rises around them. One understands that it's not a physical place. It's in the mind. So Parsifal will succeed."

  Franz Fieber stared at Kasper. At the granite wall in front of them.

  "That wall is rock solid," he said. "It's got nothing to do with the mind."

  Kasper opened the door of the van; Franz Fieber grabbed his arm. "You're not going in, are you, man? You must be absolutely crazy!"

  "I must have made a promise to KlaraMaria," said Kasper. "Also to the little boy, even if I haven't met him. I must have promised to carry them from the car. And inside into safety."

  The yellow eyes stared at him. The last bit of trust, which had never really been there, was now gone.

  "I've driven more than ten trips out here. It's secured like a military test station. Armed guards. Video cameras. Infrared sensors. You won't get even three feet inside."

  Kasper stepped onto the pavement.

  The other man's hands grasped his jacket like claws.

  "They were wrong, the sisters. You're mentally ill!"

  They crossed the road. Kasper could hear that there was very little time. Favorable sound constellations are fleeting.

  9

  Kasper tried the door of the chocolate shop; it was locked. The angel at the cash register shook her head with a smile.

  "Turn around please," said Kasper.

  Franz Fieber turned around. On the back of his white shirt Kasper wrote with his fountain pen: "My sweetheart sails tonight. Only chocolate can express my sorrow. Show mercy."

  "What are you doing?" asked Franz Fieber.

  The girl came closer. She read what was written on the shirt, laughed, and opened the door.

  "1 didn't know ships sailed from here," she said.

  "It's from Konon," said Kasper. "We're sending the top administrators on a business trip tonight. From our own jetty. My sweetheart needs a large chocolate egg. And twelve mocha balls."

  The girl packed up the egg.

  "It's going to be a surprise for them," said Kasper. "What's the best way to go in, would you say?"

  She nodded toward a road lined with magnolia trees.

  "That's the rear entrance. There's just one man there. And no cameras. The main entrance is locked. And at the delivery entrances there are cameras and lots of guards."

  The mocha balls went into a box; each one got wrapped in a piece of pink tissue paper.

  "Shall I put it on the account?"

  A patrol car drove by. Kasper took Franz Fieber's arm. If he hadn't, the other man would have crumpled to the floor.

  "As usual," said Kasper. "And if you blow me a kiss, can we put that on the account too?"

  The girl b
lushed. She was eighteen at the most.

  They went out the door. The girl blew Kasper a kiss.

  "That's free of charge," she said.

  The door closed behind them. Franz Fieber stared at him, and for a moment his fear gave way to amazement.

  "What are you--almost fifty years old?" he said. "A failure. Forgotten by everybody."

  "Many of the great ones have been good to young girls," said Kasper.

  "Elvis. Kierkegaard. Regine Olsen was thirteen. Priscilla fourteen."

  * * *

  They approached a group of dark-haired boys.

  "We'll be slashed to pieces," said Franz Fieber.

  Kasper immersed himself in their sound; he liked it. There are many reasons for dropping out of society. One is that it has little space for wildness. At least two of the boys sounded as if they had a large square in their horoscope. In ten years they would be dead, deported, or in leadership positions.

  The boy on watch was the youngest, fourteen at the most, with eyes that had seen more than was good for him. Kasper stopped a few yards from him. Put the box of mocha balls on the ground and nodded toward the road lined with magnolia trees.

  "We need to go in," he said. "Before the next patrol car goes by. In order to do that, you boys need to get the guard out of his booth. The question is whether you can do that."

  The boy shook his head.

  "That's not the question," he said. 'The question is what's in it for us?"

  Kasper laid a five-hundred-kroner bill from the Institute's resources on the box of mocha balls.

  "When I was a kid," he said, "we would have done it for a cream puff."

  "That was before World War One," said the boy. "The cost of living has gone up since then."

  Kasper laid another bill on the box.

  "I'll get a head start," he said. "The guard mustn't see me go in."

  Franz Fieber leaned against a lamppost for support.

  "Wait half an hour," Kasper told him. "If I'm not back, call the police. And notify my heirs."

  "There aren't any heirs. And no inheritance."

  Kasper crossed the promenade. The sound of crutches followed him. The young man had tears in his eyes.

  "I don't dare to be alone out here."

  * * *

  The rear entrance lay about fifty yards down the tree-lined road. Kasper held the egg up in front of the booth.

  "We're very close friends of Aske Brodersen," he said. "We wrote him a secret Easter letter and he guessed who sent it. So now we're coming with his Easter egg."

  The guard was in his late fifties; he had a well-pressed green uniform, gray eyes, and nearly an inch of laminated bulletproof glass between him and the visitor.

  "I want to give it to him myself," said Kasper.

  "I'll telephone him."

  "That would ruin the surprise."

  The gray eyes grew blank. Kasper raised a hand.

  A mocha ball hit the glass booth. The balls were large and homemade, with a thick outer layer, like ostrich eggs.

  With a little less self-importance he might have handled it. But self-importance is one of the most difficult things to lay aside. Everyone would like to be an admiral on the royal yacht. And all we have been given command over is a glass booth on the jetty.

  For a moment the guard sat motionless. Then another mocha ball struck, this time the door. At that he got out of his chair. And out of the booth.

  Kasper looked backward. The dark-haired spokesman had taken a position in the middle of the road; he used his whole body in throwing. A mocha ball hit the guard in his chest, near his heart; the impact threw him backward for an instant. Then he started to run.

  Kasper and Franz Fieber walked in through the open door; a second door to the left led to a room with video monitors above a sink and a coffee machine. Beyond that was still another door, through which they entered the Konon grounds.

  10

  The sound of the wind blowing over sandblasted granite was affectionate. Even in the dark the buildings were beautiful. All the surfaces had a silky finish; a third of the horizontal area was covered by low stone basins containing a thin film of water. They were surrounded by plants Kasper wished his mother could have seen.

  The building that had been constructed on the landfill was rectangular at the bottom. Five stories up the tower began; it was so tall the upper floors merged with the darkness.

  The building seemed to float on the sea. like an island, or a very large ship. Kasper could well imagine that a former naval officer would choose to build such a structure. If he suddenly got his hands on four hundred million kroner.

  The lower floors were dark; light shone only in a few windows higher up. Kasper tried the door. It was locked. They went around the building; on the side facing the water a scaffold had been raised, but only up to the second floor. There were no other doors, and all the windows were locked.

  Kasper listened to the sound of the wind in wires. He climbed onto the scaffold. On the last plank was a large box covered with a tarp, which he removed. Under it was the window washer's modular work cage: a little open cabin, like a chairlift, which glided against the facade on two sets of rubber wheels. There must be a railmounted winch and a continuous loop rigging on the roof. Inside the cabin were a bucket, a pole sponge, and two mops. Also a small instrument panel with four buttons.

  Franz Fieber climbed onto the scaffold like a weeping ape, entering the cabin after Kasper. Kasper pushed the start button. The lift glided upward.

  * * *

  In the glow of the instrument pane] Kasper studied the building's floor plan. There was light in the meeting rooms, a faint light in what was indicated as the "library,'' and light at the beginning of the tower in what must be the administrative offices.

  The cabin swayed slightly in the wind. Franz Fieber's face shone whitely in the darkness. Kasper stopped the lift beneath the first row of lighted windows. A voice that belonged to a woman he knew said,

  "We didn't get offered anything in Brønshøj."

  The window was open a crack; Kasper thought he heard ten or twelve people in the room, but he didn't dare peek.

  "Contour line thirty-seven goes through the Brønshøj neighborhood," the voice continued. "Even the sewers are dry. There won't be any government land for sale either, because the government insures itself."

  It was the blond woman who had brought KlaraMaria to him. Someone asked her something.

  "Seven thousand plots," she said. "Divided by twenty-two companies. In two weeks they will close the harbor. Close the Avedøre embankment. And start pumping out. Very slowly. To prevent settling damage. They've had to fill fifteen hundred homes with water. So they won't collapse. Or float away."'

  She had a lovely voice, like Irene Papas. But she was feeling very tense about something.

  "How can we be sure?"

  Kasper couldn't catch her answer. But it was evasive.

  "We all saw the fault area," said the man. "During the assessment. How does one explain that?"

  "By unique conditions that made the limestone more transmissive."

  "We saw the papers from Pylon Five. And the Land Registry office. There are soft sediments under Copenhagen. A zone of fifty to a hundred and fifty feet would have been realistic."

  "Our own geologists have looked at it. The grain size of Copenhagen lime is different from sand lime. That could explain a skid like that. Against the white chalk beneath."

  "And the earthquakes?"

  "People need to reevaluate Copenhagen. Experts are considering whether fault zones may be active. There were tremors in the Sound in the nineties. Maybe they were stronger than previously thought. There is a fault line in Sweden under the Barsebåck nuclear power plant. Stronger movements than assumed until now in the lime zones that intersect the baseline on Amager. The differing beach ridge heights on Saltholm Island suggest there have been larger quakes than previously assumed. The problem is that geological memory is short. There are no written record
s of an earthquake that occurred only a thousand years ago."

  No one said anything. She had not reached them. With whatever it was she wanted to say.

  "We can do many things," she said. "But we can't order an earthquake."

  "And if we could nevertheless?" said the man. "If the earthquake were manufactured somehow. And it was discovered. We'd get life imprisonment."

  Kasper touched a button on the panel; they glided upward. He counted the rows of dark windows. Beneath them, the ground first grew dark, and then disappeared. There was light in front of them.

  * * *

  Only one desk lamp was on in the room. Lona Bohrfeldt sat in a chairand her husband sat next to a radiator; they looked straight ahead out the window, like two people in a movie theater. They both had bandages around their jaws. The man had undergone a remarkable transformation. His face had become longer, longer than any human's; he laughed toward the window.

  Aske Brodersen stood with his back to the window; in his hand he held a little crowbar. A sheet of plastic covering had been unrolled on the floor under the three people. Kasper put on his glasses. The seated man's face hadn't gotten longer. His mouth was split open to his ears; the blows had damaged both chewing muscles, and his jaw had dropped onto his throat.

  Kasper felt the body next to him grow limp. Franz Fieber slumped to the bottom of the cabin.

  Aske Brodersen struck the seated man with the crowbar. He was standing about three feet from the window. Kasper knew that even in his prime he would not have been able to climb in over the windowsill before the other man got to him.

  He pressed the button, and the elevator glided sideways.

  "I want to go down," said Franz Fieber.

  "Pray. Keep praying."

  "I can't. I can't concentrate."

  "There's a story about Saint Lutgarde, a Cistercian nun. I hope it's okay that she was Catholic. She couldn't keep her mind on things. But SheAlmighty revealed herself to the nun. And said: 'Relax--it's all right if there are holes, because I will fill them up.'"