The Quiet Girl - Peter Hoeg Read online

  He needed only fifteen seconds with a new orchestra conductor to know if he had any verve, and the same was true with taxi drivers. This one was off the scale, a Furtwangler of cab driving. The vehicle flowed forward like a river toward the sea, Fabrik Road melting into the darkness behind them,

  "Christ will exist for eternity," said the driver. "According to the Gospel of John. Everything else will change. Now there are sensors in the seats. Connected to the taxi meter. No more unmetered trips."

  Kasper closed his eyes. He loved taxis. Even when, like now, they were driven by a rural simpleton. It was like having a coach and coachman, only better. Because when the trip was over, the coachman disappeared, the repair bills disappeared, the scrap heap disappeared. Leaving just a car--and no responsibilities.

  The driver whistled a scrap of melody, very purely, which was unusual, even among musicians. The melody was also unusual--it was BWV Anhang 127, one of Bach's two or three marches, in E-flat major, almost never played, especially in this version, a circus orchestration by John Cage. It had been Rasper's signature tune during his two seasons in the U.S. with Barnum & Bailey.

  "We saw all five of your evening performances," said the driver. "At Madison Square Garden. We left the stage at eleven-thirty p.m. I wiped off my makeup with a towel. Put an overcoat over my costume. I had a wonderful car waiting. A Mustang. When I greased it with Vaseline and kept to the right, I could drive from Fourteenth to Forty-second Street without seeing red. The police let the traffic flow. If you stay away from the highway and Riverside Drive, you can drive for years without seeing even the shadow of a speeding ticket."

  The clerical collar wasn't a collar. It was a fine-tooled web of scar tissue, as if a new head had been transplanted onto the body.

  "Fieber," said Kasper. "Franz Fieber."

  It had been an automobile stunt. A triple somersault from the ramp. In a rebuilt Volkswagen. Performed as a comedy routine for the first and last time in world history. Kasper had carefully avoided reading about the accident; he had been less than ten miles away when it happened. Both occupants were supposed to have died.

  He moved his head a fraction of an inch. The glow in the vehicle came from a votive candle; it was burning between the gearshift and a small icon of the Virgin Mary with Baby Jesus.

  The man noticed Kasper's movement.

  "I pray constantly. It's a trait that stuck with me. I first noticed it right after the accident. I started to pray. After I came to on the respirator I prayed all the time. And have ever since."

  Kasper leaned forward. To listen to the system in the front seat. He let his hand glide appreciatively over the upholstery.

  "Twelve cylinders," said the man. "There are only seven Jaguars used as taxis. In the whole world. As far as anyone knows. I have all seven."

  "So you recovered."

  "I started with a Lincoln Town Car limousine. It cost forty thousand dollars. And a fake license. After I was discharged from the hospital. By next year I'll have ninety-five percent of the limousine business in Copenhagen."

  "You must have seen very . . ."

  Young people do not know how to parry compliments. The spine in front of Kasper straightened.

  "It's very clear to me now what Paul means by saying it's through suffering we become united with Christ."

  "Like Eckehart," said Kasper. "Are you familiar with Eckehart? 'Suffering is the swiftest horse to heaven.' It was this awareness, of course, that made you realize I was the one who ordered a taxi."

  They turned off the Ring Road into Vangede, then from Vangede into Gentofte. The sounds changed; Gentofte had an old clang of porous optimism. An expectation that when the polar caps melt and the "bridge neighborhoods" of Østerbro, Nørrebro, and Vesterbro sink to the bottom, then the area from Gova to the Blidah Park housing complex will float on top like an inner tube.

  The car turned and stopped. It was parked discreetly in the dark on one of the roads leading to the racetrack. The clinic lay about fifty yards away.

  Kasper pulled out the taxi voucher from Moerk, his glasses, and the fountain pen; he filled in the blanks with the maximum amount, signed it, tore the voucher in two, held out one half toward the young man.

  "I'll be gone twenty minutes at the most. Will you still be here when I come out?"

  "This is a maternity clinic."

  "I'm going to assist in a birth."

  The young man took the yellow paper.

  "It must be a great experience," he said. "For the baby. And the mother."

  Kasper looked into the impudent yellow eyes.

  "I ordered the taxi from my home," he said. "For tax reasons, the telephone isn't listed in my name. So my name never appeared on the screen. The question is: How did you find me? And why?"

  * * *

  Fie crossed Strand Road and passed through the sound of his most basic traumas. The salty coolness from the Sound, the parklike silence of the surroundings, childhood memories from twelve different addresses between Charlottenlund Fort and Rungsted Harbor. The silent weight of the buildings' affluence, granite, marble, brass. His own unresolved relationship to wealth.

  The glass door was as heavy as the door to a vault, the floor mahogany. Not genetically engineered wood, but the dark kind that has stood on its roots for two hundred years and looked down at the carnivals in Santiago de Cuba. The room was lit by Poul Henningsen vintage lamps. The woman behind the desk had steel-gray eyes and steel-gray hair; in order to make sure he got by her, he should have put down two hundred thousand kroner and made an appointment two years before he became pregnant.

  She was the epitome of the Bad Mother archetype he had not yet integrated. It is extremely depressing to have turned forty-two and still be performing among fragments of your parents that have yet to be carried out of the ring.

  "There's less than a minute between the labor pains," he said. "How do we get hold of Lona Bohrfeldt"?"

  "She went off duty. Did you call here?"

  Part of the woman's system had shifted to listening toward the corridor to her left. Lona Bohrfeldt might have gone off duty. But she was still in the building.

  "My wife is hysterical," he said. "She doesn't want to come in here. She's sitting out in the car."

  The woman stood up. With an authority that, in forty years, had never met a case of hysteria it couldn't neutralize. She walked out the front door. He closed it behind her, and locked it. She turned around and stared at him through the glass.

  The desk was empty, but in the first drawer he opened were the telephone lists. He found Lona Bohrfeldt's number and dialed it. She answered the phone immediately.

  "Reception desk," he said. "There's a young man standing here with an insured package. He looks trustworthy. I'll let him in."

  He hung up. Beneath the number was her home address; the postal district was Raadvad. He copied it onto his lottery ticket. The woman outside watched his movements. He waved to her reassuringly. The important thing is to keep our hearts open. To the outward expression of our Unconscious, which we must separate ourselves from temporarily.

  * * *

  The corridor had oak doors with plaques giving names and titles, marble floors, and acoustics that made it sound as if the visitor were tap dancing and had come at an inconvenient time. It all made one question whether there's been nothing but progress since the Savior was born in a stable. At the end of the corridor was a set of double doors; he walked in and locked them behind him.

  Ninety-nine out of a hundred women are afraid of strange men who come in and lock the door behind them. The woman behind the desk was number one hundred. There was not so much as a whisper of concern in her system. He could have unzipped his trousers and exposed himself, and she would not have taken her feet off the desk.

  "I work with children," he said. "I have a little ten-year-old student who has talked about you."

  She had everything. She couldn't be forty yet. She had the age, the self-confidence, the education, the title, the money, th
e business, and even though she was wearing loose black wool clothing and was mostly hidden behind the desk, he sensed that with her build she could stroll down a catwalk modeling swimsuits whenever she pleased. And would do it, if she could charge for it.

  The only sign of the price we must all pay was two long furrows that had etched themselves along each side of her mouth ten years ago.

  "This is a busy workplace," she said. "People usually call first. Or write."

  "Her name is KlaraMaria. From the children's home. From Rabia Institute. She's been kidnapped. We don't know by whom. She got a message out. The message was your name. And a drawing of this place."

  She took her feet off the desk.

  "The name may ring a bell," she said. "Will you repeat it?"

  It didn't ring a bell. It rang a fire alarm. He did not reply.

  "I think there was a preliminary study for a survey. At the institute. For the Research Council. It was years ago. Perhaps a girl with that name was part of the empirical data. She must have remembered that for some reason or other. There was very little personal contact."

  "What survey?"

  "It's a long time ago."

  "Is it available for one to read?"

  Normally she wouldn't have answered, but the shock had made her more open.

  "It was never finished."

  "Even so."

  "It's a stack of pages in rough draft."

  He seated himself on the desk. If he had been wearing a dress he would have hiked it up. So she could have seen some of his thigh.

  "I'm rolling in money," he said. "Unmarried. Unrestrained. How about inviting me home? For a cup of tea. And sixty pages from the drawer?"

  The two furrows turned black. She pushed the swivel chair away from the desk. So he could see her entire figure.

  "You're speaking to a woman who is eight months pregnant!"

  She had gained weight only around the fetus itself. Her stomach was shaped like a roc's egg.

  "That doesn't matter," he said.

  Her jaw began to drop. He knelt between her legs and put his ear to her stomach.

  "A boy," he said. "A slightly more rapid pulse beat, around a hundred and thirty, D-flat major. With a premonition of D-major. Where Gemini slides over into Cancer. Your due date must be about Midsummer's Eve."

  She pushed the chair backward, tried to get away from him. He followed her.

  "Why did she give your name?"

  Steps were approaching, one woman and two men. Just when a bubble of intimacy is about to be created around a man and a

  woman, the outer world has a way of interfering, head nurses, angry men, the collective unconscious. It's tragic.

  "There's very little time," he said. "The authorities have no clues. You're probably the last chance."

  He placed his hands on the arms of her chair, his face next to hers; he spoke softly.

  "What if they kill her. And you know you could have prevented it. Every time you look at your own child, you'll think about that."

  She managed to stand up. There was a chink in her armor; she was on the verge of opening up.

  "Who is Kain?" he asked.

  Someone rattled the office door. Without taking his eyes off her, he tried a glass door; it wasn't locked. It opened onto a balcony. The kind Romeo and Juliet had enjoyed. As long as that lasted.

  Someone tried to push in the door, without success. Footsteps moved away to get a key.

  In eight hours he would be sitting on an airplane bound for Madrid. He bent down toward her. Her face became transparent. He suddenly realized that she was too frightened to speak. He let her go.

  He felt in his pockets, found the lottery ticket, tore off a corner, wrote down the telephone number at the trailer. She did not move. He opened her hand and placed the scrap of paper in her palm.

  A key slid into the lock. He opened the terrace door and swung himself over the balustrade.

  Romeo had better odds; he hadn't needed to contend with sea fog and acid rain. The copper was coated with verdigris; there was nearly half an inch of green algae on the marble rail. He slid as if in green soap.

  He hit the lawn flat; the air was completely knocked out of him. When you're six years old and it happens the first time, you think you are going to die. When you're forty-two you know you don't get off that easily. He focused on the starry sky to keep from losing consciousness. Just over the horizon was Taurus, his own persistent constellation. If he'd had a telescope, and if it had been another time of year, in the sympathetic Pisces he could have seen Uranus, the planet of sudden impulsive behavior.

  "The survey," he whispered. "It wasn't just a medical survey. You weren't alone. Someone else was involved."

  She looked down at him. Because of the fall his voice was still breathless. Nonetheless she had heard him.

  Beside her, three unknown faces came into view; the youngest sprang up on the balustrade. He lost his footing and hit the ground like a BASE jumper whose parachute has failed to open. Three feet to the right of Kasper, where the lawn ended and the natural stone chips began. It's these small differences in people's karma that determine if we get up or remain lying on the ground.

  "A female friend," Kasper added. "Blond as the chalk cliffs of Møn. Cold as an icy winter. Sharp as a German razor."

  She looked like Ophelia standing there above him. Well into Act IV. Where the process has become irreversible. He had hit home. He got to his feet. Like Bambi on the ice. He wanted to start running. But found the strength only for a fast walk.

  13

  He rolled over the garden wall and into one of the narrow passages between Strand Road and Kyst Road, He got up, reached the road. The taxi was gone. He crossed the road, increased his speed. Right now the important thing was to gain the darkness around the racetrack. Headlights blinked far back in a driveway; he ducked into the shadows. The Jaguar was backed up all the way to the house. The car door opened, he toppled into the backseat.

  "I have the radio set at seventy-one megahertz," said Franz Fieber. "The police change the signal codes once a month. The taxi drivers break them in less than twenty-four hours. They've called the Gentofte police station; two squad cars are on their way."

  A patrol car passed the driveway and stopped in front of the clinic. Three officers ran into the building, one woman and two men. Another vehicle stopped behind the first one.

  "Let us pray together," said Kasper.

  The yellow eyes stared at him in the rearview mirror. Anxiously. Young people begin to fall apart when confronted with a situation where there seems to be no means of escape.

  "The woman. Whom you locked out. She saw me back up into this driveway."

  "Just a minute," said Kasper.

  He leaned back. Prayed. Silently. In sync with his heartbeat. "Lord have pity on me."

  He confronted his exhaustion. His fear for the child. His hunger. The alcohol. The caffeine. The pain from the fall. The tax return. The humiliation. At being wanted by the police and wandering on foot through streets and alleys at the age of forty-two. And he confronted the unnatural consolation of prayer.

  A knuckle rapped on the window. The young man stiffened. Kasper pressed the button and the window rolled down. It was a woman in her sixties with her hair in a French braid. It was too dark to see what she was wearing, but even if it had been sackcloth and ashes she would have looked like an aristocrat.

  "I don't think I ordered a taxi."

  "The day may come," said Kasper, "when you will wish you had."

  She smiled. It was a beautiful mouth. It looked as if it had practiced smiling and kissing for the last sixty years and had reached perfection.

  "Will you promise to stay here until then?" she asked.

  A flashlight beam flickered over the gateposts. There was no escape.

  "I'm trying to save a child," he said. "There's no time to go into details. Due to a mistake, the police are looking for me."

  She stared straight at him. Like an eye doctor during
an exam. Then suddenly she straightened up. Turned. Walked toward the officers.

  She moved like a prima ballerina walking à la couronne. She reached the gateposts. Stood so she blocked the sidewalk and their view. Said something. Gave a gracious order. Turned around. The policemen crossed Strand Road without looking back. Franz Fieber slumped behind the wheel.

  Kasper leaned out the window.

  "When I've completed my mission," he said, "and served my Spanish prison term, I'll come back. And invite you to dinner."

  "What will I say to my husband?"

  "Can't we keep it under our hats?"

  She shook her head.

  "Frankness is crucial. Our silver wedding anniversary was ten years ago. We're going for the gold."

  Two policemen stood on the sidewalk. The exit was still blocked. "A generous heart like yours," said Kasper, "knows the neighbors. Including Lona Bohrfeldt across the road."

  "Yes, for twenty years," she said. "Since before she became famous. And moved out here."

  "She's been there when each of my four boys was born," he said.

  "My wife and I have wondered: What drives her? What is it about births? Why would anyone want to share in them two thousand times?"

  She bit her lip.

  "It could be money," she said. "And the premature babies. She's interested in them."

  The officers got into a patrol car, and the vehicles drove away. Franz Fieber started the Jaguar. The way was clear.

  "May I have your autograph?" she asked.

  He felt in his pockets; he needed to keep the voucher, and it was also wise to hold on to the lottery ticket. He tore out his pocket. His fountain pen wrote just fine on material.

  "I'm writing on my silk underwear," he said.

  "I'll keep it next to my skin."

  The Jaguar leaped forward.

  "Stop at the gate," said Rasper. "I have to blow her a kiss."

  The car stopped. He leaned out and blew a kiss. And read the nameplate on the gatepost. It had been taken down. And replaced with a for sale sign. He looked up the road. Fifty yards ahead toward the racetrack stood a dark Ford.

  "Please park just around the corner," he said.