by Peter Høeg
“Well, I never diddle!” he says. “If it isn’t Black Henrik. What’s he doing in the chapel?”
Tilte places her hand on his arm.
“Rickardt,” she says, “why do you call him Black Henrik when his hair’s so white?”
Rickardt’s eyes glaze over.
“Because of the gloves,” he says. “They were black.”
We’ve huddled closer together at the table. Rickardt is trying to collect his thoughts. The mushrooms brought to him by the little blue men aren’t helping. I gaze out onto Kongens Nytorv. The red double-decker is still waiting on its own, which is a fate many of us must learn to deal with. The yellow city buses, on the other hand, are everyone’s darlings. In between the parked cars is a black van with tinted windows. The first letters of the registration plate are TH, followed by the digits 50 17.
It may, of course, be coincidence. It’s a free country. Before, it was parked on Nikolaj Plads, now it’s parked here. Nonetheless, it’s one of those coincidences that can’t help but make you wonder.
“It must be more than twenty years ago now,” says Count Rickardt. “There were a bunch of us breezy boys and girls around Filthøj. I was the natural midpoint. It was the golden age of childhood. But the years pass, and all of a sudden everyone is spread to the wind, married or else in the care of the Prison Service. Henrik was a lark among us. We called him Holy Henrik back then, on account of his parents being so devout. Ten years pass during which time I never see him. Then one Christmas I’m home for the holiday and the whole castle’s been invaded by rats. The exterminators are summoned, and who should be standing there at the door but Henrik. A warm reunion, indeed. There he was with his own firm and an army of employees. But because the castle was his playground as a child he wants to do the job himself. For nostalgic reasons. So I pull a chair out into the courtyard between the farm buildings and light a cigar so as to enjoy the sight of a former playmate at work. Henrik paces slowly around the yard, which is a big space, fifty meters by fifty, and with him he has a suitcase with rubber bungs of different sizes, like the ones they use in laboratories. Every time he finds a hole he plugs it with one of his bungs. I suppose he finds about fifty or more. It takes him the best part of an hour, but he only goes around once, and I know he’s found them all. But one hole he leaves open and in it he puts a gas cylinder of the kind we used to gas moles before it wasn’t allowed anymore. A piece of legislation I can only applaud, I might add. We should all be kind to the animals.
“Anyway, he lights the cylinder, crosses the yard, and kneels down at another hole. Then he puts on gloves. Thin, black latex ones, to get a better grip. And then he takes the bung out of the hole. A minute passes, perhaps, before the first rat appears. Henrik grabs it. A gentle, seamless movement, but quick. And then he breaks its neck. The same with the next one, and the one after that. He puts all the dead ones in a pile next to him, and the pile gets bigger and bigger. To begin with, the rats come at intervals, but gradually they appear one after another in quick succession, but he doesn’t miss a single one. And not one of them is quick enough to bite him. By the time he’s finished, there are a hundred and twenty-eight rats in the pile. We have the staff count them before they’re burned. Then Henrik gets to his feet, takes off his gloves, and says a short prayer. It’s a sight that’s stuck in my mind. His white hair and his folded hands. The prayer. And the pile of dead rats next to him.”
Count Rickardt has journeyed back to his happy childhood. But now he returns to the Hotel d’Angleterre.
“I’ve seen him only once since then. At the premises of one of my regular suppliers. He must have got behind on his payments, the supplier, that is. Because Henrik was there. I hid under the sofa so he wouldn’t see me. He’d become a debt collector. Working the whole Copenhagen area for the biker gangs and the immigrants, the Polish mafia, some Danish firms. Very generous and broad-minded. My supplier coughed up immediately. Though I must say he was very pale afterward.”
Rickardt puts his finger to the frozen image on the screen.
“That’s him. That fine voice of his. He could have been a singer. A decent profession. Who knows, he could have made a name for himself doing backing vocals for me. But what’s he doing in the old chapel? Bit of a surprise, I’d say, for him to be part of the conference.”
“Our view entirely, dear Rickardt,” says Tilte.
We get up to leave. My eyes dwell on the count’s cigar. He traces my gaze.
“Peter,” he says, “you know what I’ve promised you if you never begin to smoke. A guided ketamine trip and a regal blow job on your eighteenth birthday.”
“The band,” I say. “Can I have it?”
Everyone looks at me. Carefully, I draw the red and golden band from around the cigar. I sense a degree of bewilderment at the table. They’re wondering if the pressure’s got to me. If little Peter has been whacked back in his development by what the mystics call astral regression, which is to say that you become a child again and at the age of fourteen start collecting things that glitter.
I leave them in the dark about that. All they get from me is a mysterious look, veiled by my long, curved eyelashes.
49
We’re on our way out and I stop at reception. On the wall are signed photographs of all the celebrities who have stayed at the hotel. I notice Cruyff, Pelé, Maradona. And Conny. Smiling from a large photo, in the bottom corner of which she has written: With thanks to all the staff for two marvelous weeks.
All good photographs make their subjects come alive. The way this happens in Conny’s case is now what’s making her famous. So besides all my other sorrows and concerns, I’m standing here in the reception of the Hotel d’Angleterre with my already broken heart in ribbons, if I may put it that way.
The feeling of Conny suddenly coming alive in front of me is so real I almost miss the bike messenger who now places a bolt cutter, a hacksaw, and two metal files on the counter and says, “For the Ministry of Education. Attention of Alexander Flounderblood.”
This is obviously a situation demanding further investigation, even if the blood of one’s heart is ebbing away, and now a young waiter appears from nowhere, pushing a serving trolley containing brunch for five. And then the receptionist puts the bolt cutter, the hacksaw, and the metal files onto the trolley.
“Fourth floor,” she says. “They called down concerning a call to be put straight through from an A. Winehappy. Tell them the switchboard’s aglow at the moment, but we’ll put it through as soon as it arrives. We haven’t forgotten them.”
I’m sure you know the feeling when your opponent’s on the attack but all of a sudden your defense has robbed them of the ball, and then comes a pass from your own penalty area, and there you are, a hair’s breadth from offside, and you see yourself dart forward without a thought in your head.
Well, the same thing happens now. The young waiter wheels his trolley away, I make a sign to the others, grab Ashanti’s sunglasses, and am off on the heels of brunch for five, through reception and into the lift.
He’s a couple of years older than me, and some of the hotel’s superiority has rubbed off on him. And yet I can tell he’s a footballer. It’s hard to say what it is. Einar Fakir says football is addictive to the character. My own take is that football is a spiritual pathway promoting the development of a shared consciousness with one’s teammates, enhanced concentration, one-pointed presence, and a purity of heart all directed toward one single goal, which is to put the ball in the back of the net, and some of all this is what I sense to be present in the boy in front of me.
“Brøndby or FC Copenhagen?” I ask.
“Copenhagen.”
I chant: “When you hear the NOISE of the Copenhagen boys …”
This goes down well in the confines of the lift. For anyone born on Finø, only Finø FC exists, but politeness may often dictate demonstrating one’s knowledge of inferior local teams.
All his airs have vanished now, and standing in front of me
are the bare bones of a friend.
“Flounderblood,” I say. “The one you’re taking brunch to. He’s my favorite uncle and it’s his birthday. We’re playing a practical joke on him, hence the tools. He’s always game for a laugh. And what would really make this day unforgettable for him would be if you lent me your jacket and gave me four minutes to serve him his food.”
I take the housekeeping wallet out of my pocket and produce from it a five-hundred-kroner note, holding it in the light to give him the full benefit.
“He’s fifty today,” I tell him. “Lovely man.”
He takes off his jacket. I put it on, then Ashanti’s sunglasses. The mirrors in the lift reveal that even my own mother would have to look twice in order to recognize me.
The boy extends his hand.
“My name’s Max,” he says. “I play for AB. They call me Max-attax.”
“I’m Peter,” I say. “It means rock in Latin. On Finø they say I’m the rock on which the Finø AllStars are built.”
And then I knock, open the door, and wheel in the trolley.
50
The room I enter must be a bridal suite. Even if it isn’t, I for one certainly wouldn’t mind spending my wedding night here if it weren’t for the fact that my life is devoted to a mere memory.
The suite has two large rooms facing Kongens Nytorv and the standard of comfort is a match even for the White Lady of Finø.
At a table sit Anaflabia Borderrud and the wife of Thorkild Thorlacius, and behind them stands the great scientist himself.
None of them condescends to look at me, part of the reason being that the staff of such exclusive establishments as the Hotel d’Angleterre merge into the wallpaper, and another part being that they are mesmerized by the food, and understandably so. Most likely they haven’t had a bite all day, because in the ship’s restaurant this morning they became embroiled in scuffles and were then put in chains. And now, still handcuffed, they have escaped, and the effort must have cost them no end of calories.
It’s clear that they’re not merely hungry. They’re ravenous.
But they are also in distress. All three of them endeavor to keep their handcuffs hidden, and again one understands them only too well. Indeed, the fact that they have escaped Lars and Katinka to seek refuge in the Hotel d’Angleterre without being apprehended commands respect and is testimony to the combined powers of science and religion.
Just as I begin to serve, the telephone rings. Thorkild Thorlacius answers it, which is no easy matter, seeing as how his hands are restrained behind his back, and his wife must hold the receiver to his mouth. I hear the voice of the receptionist announcing Albert Winehappy.
You can learn a lot about a person by observing what they can effectuate over a telephone. Thus, when Thorkild hears the voice on the other end, he straightens his shoulders immediately as though caught in the act of stealing dried fish.
“I see,” he says. “Indeed. My pleasure. We’re at the Angleterre. Yes, I realize there may be a warrant out for our arrest. But once again the whole regrettable matter is down to police incompetence. Even as I speak, we are preparing our complaint in the expectation that two detective constables will be suspended pending charges of wrongful arrest and unwarranted use of force.”
On the street below, a couple of patrol cars pass by with sirens blaring. The noise, and perhaps the first germ of paranoia as regards officers of the law, stuns Thorkild Thorlacius into immediate silence. I become aware of the extent of the police presence at Kongens Nytorv. And now I sense the pride and tension that prevail over Copenhagen on account of the impending conference. It feels as if the whole city is trembling.
At the same time, I sense, or rather hear, something quite different indeed, something that is at once banal and so surprising that to begin with I am unable to comprehend its significance. The calamity of police sirens that bursts into the bridal suite from without, which has compelled Thorkild Thorlacius to pause in his lament, issues simultaneously from the receiver of the telephone in his wife’s hand.
The sound dies away and Thorkild returns to the now.
“Then there’s the matter of the children,” he says. “The fugitives. We have reason to believe that they are now in Copenhagen. We almost certainly identified them on board the ship. In disguise, of course. It is my considered opinion—as a psychiatrist—that they pose a serious threat to their surroundings.”
Words are uttered at the other end. Words that compel Thorkild Thorlacius to sit down.
“I see,” he says.
He fumbles for paper and pen, which again is no easy matter with your hands cuffed behind your back.
“Why a code?” he asks. “My name is usually more than sufficient. I am known by the public. From television.”
More words are uttered at the other end, and it’s plain that they anger Thorkild Thorlacius, because when Albert Winehappy terminates his call, Thorkild attempts to head-butt the receiver.
“Disrespectful,” he splutters. “He told me to put a sock in it. To mind my own business. Even had the audacity to suggest I find myself another hobby instead of assaulting policemen. He proposed lap dancing. Whatever that might be.”
“That’s his Jesuit nature,” says Anaflabia Borderrud. “Rumor has it he was a Catholic priest before joining the police.”
“In the corridors of government they call him the Cardinal.”
The voice is Alexander Flounderblood’s, and it comes from inside the adjoining room, which is why I haven’t been aware of him until now.
“He’s come all the way up the ladder,” Alexander goes on. “Now has one of the top jobs in Interpol. Called home to oversee security for the conference.”
His voice is full of awe. One can only conclude that top jobs abroad are a permanent fixture of Alexander Flounderblood’s most intimate dreams.
“He went on about a code,” says Thorkild. “A code by which we are to identify ourselves when entering the conference. I have never before needed to identify myself on any official occasion. I shall speak to my dear friend the minister of the interior on the matter.”
I remove the lid from the dish of hot scrambled eggs and small cocktail sausages. The aroma draws Thorkild Thorlacius out of his chair.
This allows me to filch the piece of paper with the access code and stick it in my pocket. And to peer into the adjoining room. Alexander Flounderblood is lying outstretched on the couch, and Vera the Secretary is massaging his scalp.
This is a sight that fills me with immediate and deep-felt joy. It speaks volumes of the transformational power that resides in the relationship between a man and a woman. Less than four hours ago, there had been little cause to doubt Vera when she stated to the police that she did not care for physical contact. And until this moment, I and most others on Finø have been convinced that with the possible exception of Baroness it would be impossible to dig up another living soul who would voluntarily caress Alexander Flounderblood.
Both prejudices have now been put to shame.
This fact elevates me, yet the sudden lift in spirits causes a small measure of my rock-solid composure to crumble. What happens is that I briefly remove my sunglasses so as to send Alexander Flounderblood a wink of congratulation.
Instantly, I realize that I may have been pushing my luck and hasten to whisk the trolley out into the corridor where I return the jacket to Max, shove Ashanti’s sunglasses into place on his nose, stick five hundred kroner into his breast pocket, and whisper, “See you at the match.” And then I push the button to summon the lift.
Behind me comes a gargling sound, a rattle of handcuffs, and then a thud as something heavy falls to the floor. From which I deduce that Alexander Flounderblood has attempted to leap to his feet straight from prone position.
“The waiter! The boy! It’s him! Peter Finø! The little devil!”
I hear Anaflabia and Thorlacius trying to hold him back.
“Calm down, man!” Thorlacius commands. “We’re all under dures
s. Studies show that in situations such as the present, hallucinations are commonplace …”
The lift arrives and I step inside. Alexander is now in the corridor, and once again one has to admire the meticulousness of the Ministry of Education in selecting their staff, because despite being bound like a hog the man moves with the speed of a bullet. He pins Max to the wall with his chest. Anaflabia and Thorkild Thorlacius are right on his heels.
Max removes Ashanti’s sunglasses. Alexander stares at the face in front of him.
“But that’s impossible,” he groans.
The doors of the lift close. The last thing I hear is the sound of Max’s voice.
“This is assault. I’m calling the police. From the look of things, I’d say they know you already. Though for five hundred kroner I could start to consider putting it all behind me.”
51
Hans and Tilte and Ashanti and Basker and I are sitting in the car looking out on Kongens Nytorv. The future seems mixed. In a moment, Hans will start the engine and drive us to the Store Kongensgade Police Station. Four individuals will thereby be prevented from vandalizing religious treasures to the tune of a billion kroner, if I’ve understood things correctly, and that’s the positive aspect. But then comes the search for Mother and Father, and the proceedings against them, the prison sentences they will receive, and long spells in a children’s home for me and a youth detention center for Tilte, not to mention a rather bleak outlook, at best a kennel, for Basker.
We’ve done all we could. We couldn’t have done any better.
Between what we’ve done and what we’re about to do comes this brief halftime interlude. The studies Tilte and I have conducted have revealed that all the great mystics have pointed to the halftime interval and said that in it resides the very particular chance to sense that worry is of our own making, and that only one place exists in which one may be relieved of it, and that place is what they call the here and now.
