The Elephant Keepers' Children

by Peter Høeg

  Pallas Athene has returned to more or less the same reality as the rest of us. And now she turns to face us.

  “Ship horns,” she says.

  59

  We listen. A single horn can be heard in the distance. But it’s not something one would ordinarily be inclined to announce to the world. The thought strikes me that Pallas Athene has just been prevented from terminating the life of a male cyclist, and the experience may perhaps render it too hard for such a sensitive system as hers to suppress its spontaneous emotion.

  “He rang me up yesterday. Henrik. Wanting me to go to them. I turned him down. Hardly ever do it. Too dangerous. I like to have Andrik around. So they made a booking for the next day. But in the background was the same sound. I live on the harbor myself. It was the sound of horns from the ships.”

  “Did you get an address?” I ask.

  She nods slowly.

  “That’s what was odd about it. Normally we know as little as possible about the clients. But in this case he gave an address. To tell me how close it was. An address in the Free Harbor district. Pakhus was the street name, and then a number.”

  We hold our breath while she thinks.

  “It’s gone, I can’t remember,” she says, distraught.

  Then another man approaches the open window. I put my hand on Pallas Athene’s arm. But this is a different scenario entirely.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, “only I was just on my way to see you. At the address on Toldbodgade.”

  Standing on the pavement with a rosary in his hand, sporting a clerical collar, and looking like a sheikh of the desert, is the pinup boy of Ifigenia Bruhn’s Dancing School, my former teammate on the first eleven of Finø FC, Jakob Aquinas Bordurio Madsen.

  I pull Jakob into the car. It’s no exaggeration to say the Jaguar is now at bursting point. One has to bear in mind that, strictly speaking, my brother Hans requires a car to himself. But this isn’t the right time to complain about the conference facilities.

  “I want to speak to Tilte,” Jakob says.

  “Too late,” I tell him. “She’s been kidnapped.”

  He withers in front of our eyes, and this indicates two things to me. First, that he knows something about what Tilte and the rest of us are up to. And second, that although he now has his own business card and has received a message from God, and even if his rosary may not have been idle for a moment since he left Finø, his heart still isn’t done with Tilte.

  I hold up the business card in front of him.

  “She left this behind when they dragged her away,” I tell him. “She must have spoken to you.”

  His eyes wander.

  “The police,” he says.

  “The police have been informed. They’re looking for her all over. They’ve called a search for the van that took her away. We want to find out how much you know.”

  Tremendous forces are at work inside him. Their exact nature remains unrevealed to us. But one of them is definitely love. And love prevails.

  “She was with us an hour and a half ago.”

  “Who’s us?”

  “The Catholic University. She came to see me there. She told me everything. In brief, but leaving nothing out. About your mother and father. The attack that’s being planned. I took her to see an officer.”

  “An officer?”

  “An officer of the Vatican. He’s here for the conference. The Vatican has its own intelligence service. Ten times the size of the Danish one.”

  He tells us this with a trace of pride in his voice, as though comparing AC Milan to Finø FC.

  “He knew all about it. And he knew the Danish police had removed the incendiary. But he knew nothing about your parents.”

  I feel disappointed. He doesn’t have anything new. One would have hoped there to be more to Jakob Aquinas than just an elegant ballroom waltz.

  “Why would Tilte have left your card behind?” I ask him. “What was she trying to say?”

  He shakes his head emptily.

  “What did you talk about?” I ask.

  “Spadillo, the Vatican officer, told us how they think the four floaters have been financed.”

  Now I sense it. Like in football. The goalkeeper has kicked the ball upfield. It’s all been so clouded, but now the mud sinks to the bottom and the water begins to clear.

  “I don’t know a thing about politics,” says Jakob. “But it had something to do with arms. There’s a syndicate of major arms dealers. Officially, they only supply armed forces at the national level, sanctioned by the UN. Unofficially, they’ll supply anyone. There’s some sort of lobby. The Vatican and the Danish police believe they’re footing the bill. I can hardly believe it. It would be so profoundly sinful. Despicable, don’t you think?”

  I place a hand on his shoulder.

  “Beyond contempt,” I say. “Were there any names, Jakob?”

  He tries to think back. It’s plain he would have preferred me to have asked him to do the fox-trot.

  “A shipowner. He mentioned a shipowner.”

  I point to the figure thirteen that Tilte has written on the back of the card.

  “What about this, Jakob? Does this have to do with that shipowner? An address? A phone number?”

  Jakob is distressed.

  “I was away in my own thoughts. Tilte was present, though. The sun was shining in from the garden. Through the treetops. She looked like the Virgin Mary. All of a sudden I felt something. It was like a new calling, like a voice was speaking to me. It said: This girl is your future!”

  “Jakob,” I say, “try to think back. The great mystics, Catholics among them, say there’s always a part of the self that forever remains awake. Even in the rosiest of daydreams. That part of you that remains awake, Jakob. What did it hear? What was the sound track in the background when you saw Tilte as the Virgin Mary?”

  His gaze grows distant, only then to become alert.

  “She asked about the shipowner. What his name was. Spadillo wouldn’t say. She was insistent. You know what Tilte can be like.”

  He’s right about that. Several of us in the Jaguar know exactly what Tilte can be like.

  “She must have got what she was after,” I say. “A single Vatican officer against Tilte is about as much use as a snowball in hell.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Jakob,” I say, “focus on the details. Like when we go through a match in the dressing room after the final whistle. Spadillo refuses to divulge the name. Tilte insists. He refuses again. Then what?”

  “Tilte goes to the bathroom. Then she comes back. She says the door is stuck. We investigate. It’s odd. Both doors are locked, but there’s no one inside. Anyway, we manage to get it open.”

  “You and the officer get the door open,” I say. “Where was Tilte while you were doing this?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Did you leave the computer on in the living room?” I ask.

  He stares at me. He grew up part of a secure little family in Denmark, and the only thing there was to remind him of the big, bad world outside was his name. He can’t believe what I’m now suspecting.

  “But Tilte would never …” he stutters. “Tilte would never …”

  I say nothing. If Jakob Bordurio knew how far Tilte is willing to go for a good cause, it’s quite possible he’d be praying for another calling to send him back to the Catholic University and a long and peaceful life in celibacy.

  Pallas Athene has been quiet. Perhaps she’s been dealing with her grief at not having severed the jugular of the bicycling solicitor with her teeth. Now she leans over and takes the business card out of my hand.

  “It was number thirteen,” she says. “Pakhus 13! That’s one of the reasons I said no. It’s an unlucky number. Even if they were offering to pay double.”

  60

  I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed how all religions agree on what Paradise looks like. If, like Tilte and me, you look it up in illustrated Bibles and study mosaics and painting
s and the brochures of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, then you will know that according to all these reliable sources, Paradise looks exactly like the Finø Garden Center. There’s a big lawn and a babbling brook with plants all around, and trees a bit farther back, and then some happy people who believe the meaning of life involves spending Sundays caught up with hardy perennials and garden gnomes.

  Without in any way wishing to belittle such notions, I should nevertheless like to say that Tilte and I consider this to be a serious delusion. Personally, I believe that if Paradise truly exists, it must surely look more like Copenhagen’s Free Harbor area, through which we are now driving. This is an area dotted with restaurants of the same high standard as the Nincompoop on Finø Town Harbor and shops that seem to suck you in and make you forget all about the fact that your sister has been kidnapped and that your parents would be sent down for twelve years if word of what they most likely have been up to ever got out. All over, warehouses have been renovated and converted into the kind of apartments one might look forward to being able to afford after turning professional in Italy, and there are jetties and moorings and cranes and containers and warehouses enough to disguise the fact that this is no longer a working harbor but one great big window display.

  So under any other circumstances a drive through the Free Harbor would be a heavenly experience indeed, but this is far from the case now. The only thing on my mind is Tilte, so these surroundings are more reminiscent of a nightmare, which in turn indicates that our perception is mostly related to how we feel inside.

  We pass by a dock, and Pallas Athene slows down. To our right is a long quayside bustling with idyllic waterfront activity in front of a row of converted warehouses. And then there’s a sign saying Pakhus Quay and another saying Pakhus 1–24. So now we’re there.

  In front of these warehouses, boats are moored. There are houseboats, a vintage sailing vessel, and an orange tugboat belonging to the Port Authority, and if you don’t mind a recollection from my childhood I can reveal that my father read Tuggy the Tugboat aloud to me when I was small, and Tuggy was married to just such an orange vessel as two men of the Port Authority are now making ready, and after their marriage they lived happily ever after to the end of their days and begot a great many little tugboats. This was a book that got Tilte’s back up, and I remember her on several occasions expressing an interest in offering its author a course of therapy, this being prior to the time she borrowed the coffin, so I wouldn’t care to hazard a guess at the kind of therapy she might have had in mind.

  The Pakhus buildings are warehouses, but because the Free Harbor is upmarket, warehouses here are swisher than the great majority of private homes. Number 13 is some fifty meters along, just at the place where the Port Authority’s boat is moored. There are no cars parked outside, the blinds are drawn, and all the doors are closed.

  Pallas Athene pulls the Jag up to the curb.

  In so doing, she crosses the cycle lane.

  I have previously had cause to mention the ferocity of emotion that may be awakened on Finø when tourists mistakenly drive onto the pedestrian-only streets of Finø Town. I mention this again in order that no doubt may arise as to my likings for cyclists and pedestrians. Because at this particular moment I cannot help but note that Pallas Athene’s maneuver causes us to nudge a cyclist, a mishap that naturally directs one’s sympathy toward the unfortunate individual in question.

  And yet that cyclist would seem to be overreacting considerably when he thumps his fist against the roof of the Jaguar, because the sound has obviously not been produced by a ladybird landing on the varnish but might more likely be taken to be some precursor of World War III.

  And then the man’s head appears. His teeth are bared and his lungs filled with air, ready to expel his battle cry.

  Pallas Athene and I stare at each other. The man is the solicitor we encountered ten minutes ago.

  I actually understand him. He has cycled through the Free Harbor. The route is perhaps longer than if he had carried on along Strandboulevarden. But coming this way will have allowed him to recover from his encounter with Pallas Athene and to renew expectations as to meeting his fiancée, and perhaps she may even have promised to show him her new tattoo, so it would be of the essence for him to be at the top of his game.

  So the man will have been absorbed in his own thoughts, and now he’s been forced off the road again, his wound opens and he doesn’t realize it’s the same red Jaguar until it’s too late and he’s hammered his fist against the roof.

  Pallas Athene opens the door and gets out.

  “Are you following me?” she asks.

  From where I’m sitting I’m unable to see her face. But it’s clear from her tone that she’s on her way toward her eighth conviction, and chances are this time it’s going to be for manslaughter.

  Once again, however, we are provided with a shining example of the transformational power of love and the influence the Gorgeous One has exerted upon my brother Hans. Because now, without his even pausing to consider the position of the planets, Hans physically intervenes and Pallas Athene is brought to a sudden halt.

  This time, it’s all he can do to keep her restrained. But his grip is firm. It allows me to get out of the car, calm and collected, and to walk round the other side and approach our solicitor friend.

  “Do you realize we just saved your life?” I say. “She’s famous for chewing up razor blades and spitting out needles.”

  The man nods, temporarily unable to speak. Meeting Pallas Athene in a foul mood twice in brief succession can mark a man for life.

  “So if I might borrow your flowers,” I go on. “We’re paying a visit unannounced. And we need a peace offering.”

  Pakhus 13 is made up of a low office section adjoining four separate storage facilities, and we’re in some doubt as to where to start.

  We’ve left Pallas Athene and Ashanti behind in the car, this being one of those situations requiring women and children to be kept out of harm’s way.

  As we pass the office, a vehicle draws to a halt in front of the entrance. I hesitate to use the rather profane designation car, but no other word seems to exist that would be fitting.

  The vehicle is a large Maserati, and out of it climbs a uniformed chauffeur. Three men leave the office building, and if for a moment one removes oneself from one’s prejudices and considers the scene with what the spiritual systems refer to as choiceless awareness, one would have to concede that the sight is uplifting indeed.

  The car is such that one can think only that if the great Prophets had been free to select the kind of fiery chariot on which they tend to be transported into the heavens, they would most certainly have chosen this one. And the suits the four men, including the chauffeur, are wearing could never be a cause of embarrassment, not even on Judgment Day in front of the Lord himself. Even here in Copenhagen’s Free Harbor, they’re a touch of class.

  The two men taking up the rear may be bald and built like the kind of two-hundred-kilo blocks of concrete that are used to fortify coastlines, but the clothes make them float. And the man in front possesses an implicit authority that makes you think there really must be justice in the world, because this man looks like a person who deserves to be as rich as an oil sheikh and would seem to be just that.

  The only blemish is that his self-esteem ran away with him when he purchased the car, because the number plate is personalized with his own name: Bellerad.

  The shipowner and his two bodyguards have turned to face us and are momentarily paralyzed by unexpectedly having run into us again.

  And once more we find ourselves in one of those situations in which something from without takes hold of me. I know why it happens, and the reason is that I now sense Tilte’s presence, and because we desperately need to know if the van that took her away is nearby.

  So I walk straight up to Bellerad. His bodyguards refrain from intervening. It’s happened before and is one of the advantages of being small: the defense is always goi
ng to underestimate you, and before you know it you’re in front of the goal.

  “The men in the van,” I say. “The one that came in here. They dropped a wallet. I want to return it.”

  No matter how well prepared you might be, if you’re taken sufficiently unawares reality always breaks down. And before Bellerad collects himself again, I trace his gaze as it points me toward the gate in front of the nearest storage facility.

  I hand him the roses I’m carrying. He accepts them mechanically.

  “These are from His Majesty King Aziz and the Grand Synod,” I say. “In advance of your medal. With heartfelt greetings. Mind the thorns.”

  Bellerad stares blankly at Hans, at Jakob, and then at me. He looks toward the Jaguar. He tries to assess our relative strengths. And then he climbs into the Maserati, the two baldies follow him, and the car pulls away.

  There’s no doorbell to ring, only a sign that says Bellerad Shipping. I place my ear to the door and can hear what sounds like sobbing. I knock. The sound stops. The door opens just a crack.

  “Pink Messengers,” I say.

  The crack widens. The man who peers out at me has tears in his eyes.

  “You don’t look like a messenger,” he says.

  “Well, I am,” I tell him. “And the message I bring is a sorrowful one.”

  And then Hans kicks the door in.

  When Hans kicks a door in, standing behind it is not recommended. But that’s exactly what the man is doing.

  I don’t know if you share my interest in the finer points of kicking techniques, but if you do I can tell you that from a technical angle Hans’s kick involves the application of the same kind of force employed in football when delivering a long, flighted pass. This particular kick removes the hinges from the frame, propelling both the door and the man backward into the room.

  Hans and Jakob Bordurio and I follow them in. We enter a large storage space, which occupies most of the building. The van is parked on the bare concrete, otherwise the place is empty.