The Quiet Girl - Peter Hoeg

by Peter Høeg

  She was gone. The interrogation team was back. They asked something, he answered; he understood neither their questions nor his answers. Moerk entered the room. With a small knife in his hand. He cut the handcuffs; Kasper gratefully rubbed his swollen hands.

  "Kain and the woman?" he asked. "They got away. Was that part of the deal?"

  Moerk shook his head. Kasper could hear he was telling the truth.

  "The Avedøre embankment is closed. They've started pumping out the water. The inner city will be reopened in seven months. In eighteen months Copenhagen will look like itself again. Scarred. But otherwise as if nothing had happened."

  "The desert fathers," said Kasper. "And Hegel. And Karl Marx. And the authors of the Old Testament. They discovered that if a person or a city was warned. By the Divine Being. And did not listen. Then history repeated itself. First as warnings. And later as catastrophes."

  Beneath the other man's fatigue Kasper heard the anger. But the point is to make people wake up. And it's quite all right that sometimes it's hate that awakens first.

  "I was never interested in religions," said the official. "And I'm especially not interested in Karl Marx and the desert fathers."

  "It's never too late to become wiser," said Kasper. "Not even at the point where you are. Three-fourths in the grave."

  Moerk drew back. Without training in the ring, without five thousand nights with two thousand people who don't give up at the

  doors, it's hard to have the last word with a clown.

  The door slammed. Kasper put his head on the table and fell asleep.

  2

  He awoke to daylight coming through the bars at the windows and managed to get to his feet. From his second-floor room he looked out toward Fælled Park and the outdoor swimming pool. He was in Section A of Rigshospital, a locked ward.

  He was wearing hospital underwear. A T-shirt and pajama bottoms. On the table lay the lottery ticket, his fountain pen, and four

  kroner, seventy-five øre, in change. They had taken away his shoes. He lay down, absolutely still. Tried to connect with his nervous system.

  From the loudspeakers at the outdoor cafe in the park he heard a saxophonist tackle the hopeless task of repaying some of our communal debt to Coltrane.

  On the radio of a parked car Chet Baker was singing in a recording from the days when he still had his Dean Martin looks, with teeth in his mouth and hair on his head. It was swing music, the likes of which, Kasper imagined, could otherwise only be heard from the heavenly hosts as they circled around God's throne.

  From the paddleboat lake came the sounds of children's voices and laughter; they merged into snatches of Brandenburg Concerto Number 2. Bach's music could swing too.

  He listened out through the wall. To the sound of two men who had not yet had deeper contact with the feminine spirit; it was the

  two monks.

  The door opened. The Blue Lady walked into the room, followed by the monks. She held her arms out to the side; they frisked her and left the room, shutting the door behind them.

  He sat down on the bed, and she pulled a chair over next to him. For a while they sat there like that. The silence thickened around them.

  "The children are safe," she said. "Stina is safe. They were questioned, which was no fun, but now that's over. Now they have peace and quiet."

  He nodded.

  "Benneweis Circus has announced its fall program; you're on it--posters are already printed. It appears that you've had a selfappointed impresario, a woman; she said on television that she's gotten a binding commitment from the Interior Ministry that your Danish citizenship will be restored. I've spoken with the patriarchate of Paris, and they have approached the Spanish king regarding the question of a pardon. We'll see how that goes."

  The woman rose.

  "I want to get out of here," said Kasper. "I want to see Stina and KlaraMaria."

  "They want to put you through the extensive psychiatric examination ordered by the court. The Intelligence Service isn't finished with you either. Nor is Department H. They say it will take three months. You'll be out in August."

  He clutched her nun's habit. She gently removed his hands.

  "The time comes," she said, "when feelings between the student

  and the teacher have reached a depth that indicates there will be help and contact whenever needed. But we always have to be careful not to let it slip into mollycoddling."

  Anger rose in him like a jack-in-the-box.

  "Surely you can give me more than that?" he said. "Look at my situation. I need information. I need comforting and blessing."

  "I can give you a bus card."

  "They've taken my shoes," he said. "That's more effective than chains and handcuffs. Without shoes I won't get any farther than Nørre Boulevard."

  "Before I came in here," she said, "I went to the restroom. In the hall just outside here. The ladies' room. In there, I somehow forgot the shoes I was wearing when I arrived. By divine coincidence, they were jogging shoes. Much too big for me. Size ten. They felt like clown shoes. Fortunately, I had these in my pocket."

  She stretched out her foot. She was wearing a pair of white gymnast shoes.

  She stood up.

  "I'm not the one who told you that Stina and KlaraMaria are at the Institute. But only for twenty-four more hours at the most."

  She was gone.

  * * *

  Fie opened the door.

  "I need to use the toilet," he said.

  The monks walked on either side of him, holding him under the arms.

  "Would one of you please go in with me?" he said. "The past few days have been hard on my nerves; I don't like to have to sit and take a crap all by myself."

  They edged away from him a little, which was what he had counted on. When he went into the restroom they remained outside

  the outer door.

  He knew the restrooms. He had been on the locked ward several times during the good years, with students who had borderline diagnoses and schizophrenics who had scored 1.0 on the Thought Disorder Index. In those days he had gone along with everything if the parents had money. And sometimes also, already then, out of compassion. It was nice to think that this compassion came back to him now like a gentle karmic wind.

  Both Francis of Assisi and Ramana Maharshi had said that, for the enlightened person, the world is a madhouse, while locked wards can seem refreshingly normal. Both men had called themselves "God's clown."

  He went into the women's restroom. The shoes were behind the toilet bowl. They were his shoes. She must have found them in his suitcase.

  They had a celestial tone. He reached inside them and felt the kroner bills. There were five thousand kroner, in five-hundred-kroner bills. Bohr looked healthier than before.

  The mirrors above the sink were plates of polished stainless steel. One of Rasper's students from those earlier days had escaped from a restroom, through the ceiling; she was never found. What clients can manage must also be possible for the therapist. He climbed onto the water tank and then up onto the hand dryer. The panels in the ceiling were rock-wool slabs; many psychiatric disturbances cause increased sensitivity to sound. Like his own now, for example. He pushed up a panel and pulled himself into a ventilation duct.

  He crawled out of the duct and found himself in front of an empty office facing Henrik Harpestreng Road. He jumped from a window onto the green lawn by the hospital laundry, reached through an open window, and fished out a pair of blue work pants from a pile of uniforms.

  Spurred by a happy impulse, he went back to the main entrance.

  He gave Lona Bohrfeldt's name at the reception desk, was told a floor, a section, and a room number, and took the elevator up.

  * * *

  The room was on a surgical ward and had several beds in it. In the bed by the window lay a man with a bandaged head, but the sound and general atmosphere around him were full of vitality. Above the bandages his black hair bristled like a clothes brush.


  Lona Bohrfeldt sat on a chair beside the bed. She was in the last trimester of pregnancy, where both body and sound seem ready to burst.

  "I came on duty now," said Kasper, "here at my second job as the medical director, in order to check up on your health. May I?"

  He put his ear to the woman's abdomen; a spasm went through the man in the bed.

  "Everything sounds stable," said Kasper. "He's had some shocks, that little fellow. But he's recovering. Children can stand an incredible amount. He'll be a fully developed troublemaker. How are things going with the gums?"

  "He still needs to be careful about speaking," said the woman.

  "Enjoy it," said Kasper. "As long as it lasts. We all talk too much."

  "What about the children?"

  "They're back. With their parents."

  Tears came to her eyes.

  "Kain has disappeared," he said. "Do you have any idea where I could find him? Just to have a polite exchange of opinions about what's happened."

  She shook her head.

  "The only thing he kept saying," she said, "was that there had to be a sauna nearby."

  Kasper moved toward the door.

  "We want to thank you," she said.

  "Remember Beethoven," said Kasper. "When the audience blubbered too much, he said: 'The artist doesn't want tears. He wants applause.'"

  "We want to invite you to the christening."

  The patients in the other beds were following the exchange.

  "A person like me," said Kasper, "must usually protect his private life from his overwhelming popularity. But in this case, I could make an exception. So I'll come. Like the fairy godmother. And as a baby gift I'll bring the little juvenile delinquent the best hearing. And the best manners."

  "In return," said Lona Bohrfeldt, with a glance at his work pants and T-shirt, "perhaps we could help you with some nicer clothes."

  * * *

  He walked down Blegdam Road; when he heard the sirens he ducked into Fælled Park. He found the place within himself where the prayer went like this: "May SheAlmighty's will be done, even if it means I get nabbed. But I still pray to have just one hour."

  A woman ran past him. She was wearing sharkskin and running shoes. It was the head of Department H, Asta Borello.

  "I got out of the locked ward," he said.

  Without losing speed, she turned her head. Saw the hospital T-shirt.

  He couldn't have kept pace with her very long, but that wasn't necessary either, thank God; she slowed down and began to walk. Staring straight ahead. He empathized with her; he knew the feeling. Of hoping you are standing before a fata morgana. And at the same time knowing that, alas, that's not the case.

  "I'd like you to know that I don't hold a grudge," he said. She wanted to start running, but her legs refused to obey.

  "I'll not only pay my taxes gladly," he said. "I'll pay them with quivering delight. But I'd like to help you go further. In your personal development. That's the danger, with the Customs and Tax authorities, and with excessive physical training. The danger of losing your natural, flowing, feminine spontaneity. Think about it."

  He had to move on. He set out at a trot. By the rose garden, near the Østerbro post office, he turned and waved. She didn't return his greeting. But even at that distance he could hear that the meeting had made a lasting impression.

  * * *

  He waited in the bushes opposite the steps up to the post office. It didn't take even five minutes before a car stopped; a man got out to mail a letter, leaving the key in the ignition and the motor running.

  Kasper got into the driver's seat. On the seat beside him lay a suit jacket in a carrying bag and an active cell phone. How lucky can one be? "For he that has, to him shall be given" (Mark 4:25). He locked the door and rolled the window down slightly.

  The man was the blond Prince Valiant, Professor Frank.

  Kasper listened into the situation. Into its divine improbability. He knew--knew, but without understanding--that he was on the threshold of the place where his life's storyboard had been mapped out.

  "I'm an ethical person," he said through the crack in the window.

  "A devout believer. But I need a car. And I don't think it's a coincidence that it will be your car. I think you and I are getting a glimpse of compensatory karma in action. A kind of fateful payback. But still, I want you to know that you can pick up your car tomorrow. On the tent grounds at Bellahøj. The keys will be above the visor."

  Then he stepped on the gas.

  * * *

  He drove across Langelinje Bridge and parked near the tollbooth. His good judgment told him that he ought to be weighed down under great unsolved existential questions: Where is the woman? Where is the child? What will the revenge be? However, good judgment is but one of the many voices in the internal boys' choir. Instead he heard the springtime. He heard the life around him. Even the people busy scraping together money on a walk along the beach, with no other perspective than being able to have an overweight retirement and leave a respectable amount of small change to the children--for whom a large inheritance is downright harmful, even when it sounds wonderful. And it wasn't only the people. Kasper also heard the migration of birds toward Falsterbro, as spring worked its way toward Sweden.

  He dialed the number Kain had written on the lottery ticket.

  "Yes?"

  A person must be careful when answering the telephone-- someday it could be one of the great clowns calling. Kain should have let it ring; as soon as he took the call he was located. Kasper listened for a moment. Then he broke the connection.

  He drove back past the English Church. On its grounds the Russian czar had once planned to construct a large Russian Orthodox Church; perhaps with a little more tailwind, Hesychasm could have been more successful with the Danish public.

  Kasper parked on the square by Marmor Church. Put on the suit jacket. He bought a pack of playing cards at the kiosk on Dronningens Tvær Street. Outside Nevsky Church he stood for a moment enjoying Bronikov's portrait of Alexander Nevsky, then he took a deep breath, said a prayer, and listened to the Church. To its discipline. Its compassion. Its stubbornness. Its deep understanding of how experiences of the Divine require training. It was like the circus. To Kasper, Luther's idea that everything is preordained had always seemed completely contrary to everyone's daily experience. Shortly before Groucho Marx died, a journalist asked him to sum up existence. The great comedian had stripped the irony off his face like a latex mask; so close to the grave there was no time for anything less than the truth. "Most of us," he said, "must try to compensate for our low intelligence with hard work. It's all a matter of training."

  Kasper pressed the doorbell; the deacon opened it.

  "I need a bath," said Kasper.

  * * *

  They walked through the small assembly hall. The deacon opened a door and handed Kasper a large, coarse-woven towel; steam poured out toward them, as thick as smoke.

  It was a Russian bathhouse. Kasper walked along a narrow tiled corridor; he counted five open doors leading to small rooms, each with its sunken bathtub. In several of the tubs men lay floating, weightless, breathing softly, like baby walruses. The corridor opened into a communal room with a small circular pool; six men sat on a ledge in the hot water, three of them with long beards.

  Kasper took off his clothes and laid them on a chair. Then he walked through a glass door into the steam bath.

  The walls of the room were painted with purification motifs from the New Testament: Jesus' baptism, Jesus washing the disciples' feet, Mary Magdalene washing Jesus' feet. The woman was portrayed with her face turned away, so she wouldn't see the nakedness in the bathhouse.

  Along the far end of the room were three levels of marble ledges; Kain sat on the bottom ledge. Kasper pulled a chair in front of the other man and sat down.

  Kain must have been sitting there for a while; his face was red and moist, the veins on the surface of his skin pulsating.

  "It w
as you who telephoned," he said. "How did you find me?"

  Kasper pointed to the surroundings. They heard the quiet hiss of the steam from vents under the marble ledge. The water murmuring in the pipes. From somewhere far off, music could be heard.

  "Tchaikovsky's liturgy and vesper service," said Kasper. "I couldn't hear either the themes or the words. But the modal character came through. And the overtones from the bells. They must have bells. I haven't heard them ring. But they swing in rhythm when there's singing."

  He opened the pack of cards, cut the deck, and shuffled.

  "There are six bells," said Kain. "Constructed as a carillon. The last bell ringer who had mastered the technique died in '62. The Church and its mysteries are in danger of dying out. I'm going to be its salvation."

  Kasper dealt the cards.

  "How," he said, "did a wealthy man of honor like you, who owns spas and sanatoriums, develop an interest in a little Russian bathhouse with an adjoining chapel on Bred Street?"

  "Mother Maria told me about it. It's a meeting place for the religious patriarchs. The priests from St. Ansgar Church come here. The Catholic bishop. The chief rabbi. The royal confessionarius. Mother Maria says when the day comes that they also invite her and the imams, a new perspective will open for religious life in Denmark."

  "And how do you know Mother Maria"?"

  "KlaraMaria introduced us."

  Kasper felt a sudden, inexplicable, and irrational stab of jealousy. Men do not want to share women's attention with other men; it makes no difference whether the women are over seventy or under twelve--we want them entirely for ourselves.

  "Pick up your cards," said Kasper. "We're playing Hold'em, two cards in your hand, five on the table, three rounds."

  Kain picked up his cards.

  "What are we playing for?" he asked.

  "For your life," said Kasper.

  Kain looked at him. Kasper heard again the physical threat of the other man.

  "The stakes are parts of the truth," said Kasper. "Candor. I'll begin: Can you hear the sounds around us? The reflection from the marble walls? Slightly softer than granite. But still hard. Yet toned down by the steam. It creates intimacy. In the midst of the hardness. Can you hear that?"