The Quiet Girl - Peter Hoeg

by Peter Høeg

When he was a child and all tent owners had been men and all mothers had been women, he had wished the world could be ruled by a feminine principle. Now, when that was starting to happen, he had begun to have doubts.

  He stumbled through the white corridors. Feeling as if he were crawling on all fours. Outside the attic room he stopped and listened. The African was speaking.

  "There's a box," she said. "With three hundred dolls in it. From Fætter BR toy store. It can't have been lost. You must have it somewhere."

  For mystics and clowns, every unexpected situation sparkles in the sunshine. Like a visual and auditory jewel. He opened the door.

  She was sitting at the Blue Lady's desk. Her leg was in a cast. The stitches on her face shone pink in the darkness of her skin. They were healing.

  He could hear that it was at least twenty-four hours since she had gotten any sleep. And that she could handle that.

  "Where are they?" he asked.

  He could hear dust and resin in his voice.

  "They'll write to you. Within a month."

  From anyone but her he would have forced a confession. But it wasn't the right time for self-mutilation.

  The prayer began. He was aware of his breathing. His system prepared for the final entrée. Her eyes were on him. He knew that if he made even one false move she would take him off the stage. He placed the car keys in front of her.

  "I had to steal a car to get out here yesterday. It's parked by the Nybrogård psychiatric residence. A royal-blue BMW. I'm afraid all of you will get the blame when it's found. I'm still free strictly on the basis of your medical statement. The car needs to be delivered to the tent grounds at Bellahøj. Do you think we could get one of the little novices to run over there with it?"

  She gave him a searching look. He let his tone and attention shift to her feet. That was how he had devastated Europe's poker halls. Not by going straight to the heart. Not by dissembling. Instead, he had let his attention go down to people's feet.

  She rose.

  "You'll get to see them again," she said. "Stina and KlaraMaria. It may be as long as a year. Things take whatever time they take. But you will see them."

  "I'm not worried," he said.

  She walked with one crutch. Weightless. For a moment he just sat there enjoying the scene. Bach would have done the same. Even if he had been in the midst of the final movement of Die Kunst der Fuge.

  He turned toward the telephone. He listened to the prayer. Now for the last time he had to get past a female guardian of a threshold. For the last time surmount a barrier by means of a swindle. For the last time operate very deceitfully. He felt that it wasn't for his sake alone. That something greater was active in and through him. Was it SheAlmighty? We can hope so. But can we ever be completely sure?

  * * *

  He telephoned Fætter BR, the company's main store on Roskilde Road. A young woman answered the phone. He had not prepared anything; he acted according to the openness of the voice. People under thirty haven't yet stopped believing that something wonderful can suddenly happen.

  "This is the Lord Chamberlain's office," he said. "We'd like to have five hundred Bratz dolls delivered. With cars and clothes and all the accessories. Packed in a large cardboard container. Can you do that within an hour? It's a gift for a diplomat. Have it delivered to the prime minister's official residence, between Bagsværd and Lyngby Lake. There's a separate delivery entrance at the back."

  "That would be two containers," she said. "On one pallet. With a transport company. All our own trucks are busy now. And we don't have the dolls in the warehouse; the men will need a little time to collect them from the stores."

  "That's all right," said Kasper. "We'll arm ourselves with royal patience."

  "Where should I send the bill'?"

  Kasper's mind was in his feet. The prayer continued.

  "Send it to Amalienborg Palace. The zip code isn't necessary. And we usually get a twenty percent discount."

  * * *

  He waited for the truck at the edge of the lake. It was springtime. Summer was on the way.

  The vehicle arrived after an hour. It was as large as a moving van. And the driver had a sound Kasper recognized. From the distant past. He identified the face. It belonged to one of the young knifers who had helped him get into Konon. Beside him sat the dark-haired fourteen-year-old boy.

  Kasper heard their tone expand in shock. But their faces revealed nothing.

  He borrowed a hobby knife from them. Slit open a container. He dumped dolls and packing materials into the vehicle. Until the box was half empty. Then he took the knife and cut three holes in the cardboard.

  "I'm going to climb inside," he said. "Then I want you to close the top. And tape me in."

  He took two tire irons from the floor of the truck. As Augustine, and Ramana Maharshi after him, said: "We will be guided. Still, it can't hurt to take precautions."

  "This is a fairy tale," said the younger boy. "I know the story. From school. A Danish fairy tale. Afterward well throw you in the river."

  "Never-ever-no you won't, by God."

  He gave them directions to the convent.

  "There's an African woman in the office. She has eyes as big as one of the beasts from the Koran. But don't let that scare you. Tell her you have a delivery of dolls. Sent several days ago. But delayed. And ask where it should be delivered. She'll give you an address.

  You'll drive there. You'll put me on a dolly. And take me all the way inside."

  Kasper crawled into the container. The boys did not move.

  "You've gotten thinner," said the younger one. "Since we last saw you. That's not so strange. With the life you lead."

  Kasper arranged a place to lie down. In the packing materials.

  "But your finances must still be good," said the boy.

  Kasper emptied his pockets. He found the last five thousand kroner. Handed them over.

  "You're a desperate man," said the boy. "We could try to pressure you more. We need a little something for the tire irons too."

  Kasper turned his pockets inside out; they were empty.

  "A fountain pen, maybe?"

  He handed the boys his fountain pen. They closed the top of the container and taped it up.

  "We'll bring you all the way to the person who's supposed to get this box," said the youngest voice. "Even if the Devil is guarding the place. I swear it on the Koran. And I've always kept my part of a deal."

  5

  He felt the container being loaded onto a dolly. He heard the boys' labored breathing up an ascent. He heard traffic on main streets. The echo from open spaces in parks and market squares. The wind rustling in banana trees. They were by the Botanical Gardens. Next door to the Geological Museum. Going up to the Copenhagen Observatory.

  They must have brought along skids; they got the dolly past a doorstep and into an elevator. He no longer remembered how many elevators there had been in the past months. Infinitely many. This, he somehow knew, would be the last.

  He was rolled down a corridor and through a door; he heard the space around the container become dome-shaped, or else it was he himself. The box was loaded off the dolly. The boys' steps moved away, and everything was quiet around him.

  Not the usual silence. But the silence that SheAlmighty must have been working with when she opened Her mouth and said: "Let there be light."

  He summoned the last of his strength, pressed against the cover, and burst it open.

  The room was shaped like a dome. It was the observatory itself. The ceiling was a perfect hemisphere, made of double-curvature copper plate. A gigantic telescope of polished brass and bronze next to the wall was mounted on a track that made a complete circle around the room. Josef Kain stood leaning against the ocular.

  Beneath the center of the dome, in a circle around Kasper's box, sat the twelve children, Stina, and the Blue Lady. Andrea Fink. Daffy. The Beet. They sat cross-legged. Like simpletons in group therapy. Like Hindu nuns performing a puja.


  One can't spend thirty-five years in show business without having had the opportunity to enjoy seeing naked women pop out of layer cakes on various tasteful occasions. But Kasper had never had a chance to really listen in to the situation from the women's perspective. He did now.

  He felt deep contentment. For a moment the faces around him were blank with amazement. For a moment the silence retreated from the overwhelming women and the fantastic children. And the room resounded with defenseless astonishment. The word thunderstruck would have been appropriate. Even for the Blue Lady.

  At that moment Kasper realized, and each person under the observatory dome realized, how even in the most sacred gatherings SheAlmighty holds back the clown until the last moment, as a trump card up her sleeve.

  Then the silence was regenerated.

  The Blue Lady stood up and went over to get a chair; the children made room in the circle. She placed the chair in it.

  "Kasper Krone," she said. "Avanti. We're very happy to see you."

  The suitcases were lined up along the walls with the tags of eleven different airlines already attached. He was witness to a farewell.

  "The children were never kidnapped," he said. "They went along voluntarily. There was a skirmish. But no coercion. They made a deal with Kain. What was it?"

  Shame was not a word he would have connected with the children in front of him. But the feeling was present now. Dissonant in a magnificent way. Like the beginning of the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth. The children, each and every one, resembled ten-to-fourteen-year-old sex offenders who have been caught in the act and now, like all the rest of us, must try to understand how to go on living and preserve one's dignity and belief in free will after discovering that we exist like beach fleas on a whale of submerged powers we can't control.

  "They wanted to get together," said the Blue Lady. "Here in Copenhagen. They wanted to see one another again. It's very complicated, and expensive. To bring twelve children here. We do it once a year. With great difficulty. They got Kain to do it."

  Kasper looked at the man by the telescope.

  "You," he said. "You wouldn't even help a ninety-year-old across a highway without having investigated her credit worthiness. What did you get in return?"

  He felt the woman weighing her words.

  "He thought the children could achieve something. In the physical world. That the mind--if it can reach the point where reality is not yet created--can influence the physical environment. That was naive, of course."

  "Of course," said Kasper.

  Concealment colors the edges of a situation like funereal borders of polluted sound. The room trembled with what was not said. Kasper knew that SheAlmighty would appoint somebody to liberate the moment. He hoped it would not be him.

  It was the quiet girl.

  KlaraMaria stood up.

  "Josef," she said. "Mother Maria. Daffy. Andrea. Suenson. I want to talk with you outside. Alone. For a minute."

  The words were spoken with profound seriousness. With great, innocent solemnity. In certain instances a child's insistence is so powerful that everyone has to comply: the little boy in "The Emperor's New Clothes," young Jesus in the temple. The Blue Lady stood up. Kain followed her. Daffy. Andrea Fink. The naval officer.

  They should have stayed seated. From the moment they stood up, they had no chance.

  The girl held the door for them. They walked out. Then she closed it from the inside. And locked it.

  The door looked like it dated from the time the observatory was built. Solid oak. Heavy as a church door.

  The girl turned toward the children and Kasper. Then she smiled.

  It was a smile that made Kasper want to crawl back into the cardboard box. But it was too late. That's why you have to think carefully before beginning the journey out of your personality in earnest. Often there's really no easy way back.

  "I don't know what you think about war," she said. Kasper did not say anything.

  "We thought that if we showed the world something, something really unbelievable, then maybe we could get the world to understand. Get grown-ups to understand. And to stop waging war."

  Rasper's mouth was dry. But his eyes were moist.

  "That's a very nice thought," he said. "What did you want to show the world?"

  "We thought if it was something really big," she said. "That the whole world would hear about it. Something in a city. Where nobody got hurt. But where people would realize how much it could cost if we didn't stop. That's the only thing people are really afraid of. Losing money. Then maybe we could get through to them."

  "And at the same time score five hundred Bratz dolls," said Kasper.

  She smiled. It was not a daughter's smile to her father.

  "The one thing doesn't rule out the other," she said.

  Kasper nodded. His neck was stiff. As if he were rapidly developing meningitis.

  "Bach would have said the same thing," he said.

  She came close to him.

  "You and 1," she said. "We're going to have fun together."

  He moved away from her. Her tone grew deadly serious.

  "We thought that if it was important enough, there was nothing one couldn't do."

  "Your father has always operated according to the same principle," he said. "If one is just able to reach their hearts."

  She joined the circle.

  "Did you children make the ground cave in?" he asked. "Can the mind change physical reality?"

  Perhaps she didn't hear him. Perhaps she lowered the volume on his channel. His anger took his breath away.

  "You remember that I want to be a pilot," she said.

  She looked straight at Kasper.

  "There's a prestart checklist," she said. "Before turning on the engines. Altimeters. Electrical system. Fuel system. Navigation. Route report. Radio frequency. I've read about it. In real books. Will you help me become a pilot when I grow up?"

  He did not move.

  "Let's start the engines," she said.

  The expression on the twelve children's faces was completely open. Very alert. Relaxed, as in sleep. But with eyes wide open.

  "Did you children cause it)" said Kasper. "Did you make the ground sink?"

  She looked at Kasper.

  "Maybe it just happened," she said. "By accident. And we just sort of felt it in advance. What do you think?"

  He felt the density of the room increase. His hair stood on end. As if he were in an electrostatic generator.

  "Some of it was in English," she said. "Cabin ready. Doors released."

  She looked around at the children. One after another they nodded. Kasper wanted to run away. But he knew it was too late. His brain had lost control of his body.

  "Ready for push-back," said the girl. "Copenhagen Observatory with Kasper Krone and Stina and their daughter and friends cleared for push-back."

  She raised her thumbs.

  For a moment the building shook. Not tremendously, but very noticeably. Or else it was his own shaking.

  Then the room turned into light. Or his eyesight failed.

  He felt the observatory rise and break through the sound barrier. He looked into the girl's eyes. They were utterly calm.

  Perhaps they rose vertically. He looked out through what were perhaps the building's walls of light, perhaps a hallucination, perhaps a new form of visual perception. He thought he saw Copenhagen drop out of sight below them, as if the city were sinking into an abyss. But can we ever know for sure?

  He felt bile pressing up from his stomach. He thought he had reconciled himself to death. Now, when it was right before him, in the figure of a child, he realized that wasn't so. When it came right down to it, he didn't want to die.

  "Take us back," he said. "Put us down."

  His voice was as furry as a pipe cleaner.

  The girl smiled again. She had lost a front tooth. Or it had been knocked out. It was a toothless grin. Like those of great witches.

  "Is it possible to convinc
e you," she said, "to make another attempt? With Mother?"

  His face was a mask of perspiration. Gleaming perspiration. "This is blackmail," he said. "Spiritual blackmail."

  "That's the best kind," she said.

  He made a resigned gesture with his hands.

  "Okay," he said.

  "Swear. By SheAlmighty."

  "That's blasphemy. That's taking God's name in vain."

  "Can you afford to be hard to persuade?"

  He raised his hand to swear.

  At that moment the door was kicked in.

  It was Kain.

  Kasper was filled with a kind of respect for the man. Granted, the door was not what it had been a minute ago; it was shimmering like a watercolor painting, vibrantly luminous. But it was still made of oak.

  The Blue Lady stood in the doorway. Most of her had been transformed into rainbow light. But not all of her. And what was left was anger.

  It was a fantastic fury. Kasper realized immediately that he should appreciate the sound. That he would not have a chance to hear it very often.

  "KlaraMaria," she said. "Shut that down!"

  Kasper had never heard such a tone before. The voice was as authoritative as a true prediction of Judgment Day. It didn't ask for anything. It simply established a new reality.

  There was no landing. One moment the shining alembic seemed to be floating thirteen hundred feet above the city, outside time and space, illuminated, transparent, in absolute silence. The next moment reality was reestablished. Everything was just as before. Nothing had happened. And nothing was any longer the same as before.

  While it happened, Kasper's head had been empty. Now his psychological nature hit him like a tidal wave that had been restrained. And his first thought was: If only one could be the children's impresario!

  Isn't that what we all strive for? That our children will be able to support us, so we can sit with our feet up, let our evening cocktail and joint pleasantly blend, knowing that we've employed people to pay the best possible interest on our savings?

  Then the prayer broke though. He realized that if you are driving 250 miles an hour with SheAlmighty and you grab hold of roadside trees to pick fruit, there's a considerable likelihood that your arm will be torn off.