The Quiet Girl (21 page)

The distances between houses became greater, and then the houses ended. To the right, the valley stretched toward the Sound; to the left were the sharply rising hills. Kasper had rolled down the window. He gave a sign; they stopped and got out.

All they could see was a tall wire fence. Behind it, nearly two hundred feet of lawn leading right up to the steep hill, no house.

There were large bushes on the lawn. One of them covered a double carport, where the little Mercedes was parked. Next to a black Jeep that was as big as a tractor. The motor's cooling system was still running; perhaps that was what he had heard.

They leaned their heads back. The window was right in the hill, fifty feet above them. It was shaped like an ellipse, with about twenty feet between the focal points. The house must have been dug into the hill. The windowpane had a faint bluish glow. Like a huge eye. They found a tall narrow gate in the fence. On the gatepost were a sunken doorbell and a scarcely visible intercom box. Kasper pressed the doorbell.

In the beginning of Either/Or Kierkegaard writes that his favorite sense is hearing. He could permit himself to write that because intercoms had not yet been invented in the 1800s. He should have been here this evening. The loudspeaker gurgled like a stuffed turkey.

"It's me," said Kasper. "The situation has gotten worse. Since the last time. Now there are two children. They still haven't been found. There's also been a murder."

"I don't want to talk with you," she said.

Franz Fieber had opened his toolbox. He found a panel on the gatepost and opened it.

"Closed circuit," he said softly. "If I cut it the alarm will go off. Keep talking. I need to find the control box."

"From the time I was a boy," Kasper said into the intercom, "ever since I was born, I knew I had come to the wrong place. Right family, but wrong planet. So I started to search. For a way out. A wayhome. A door. I've spent my life looking for it. I haven't found it. But the little girl. Maybe she's standing in the doorway."

The intercom was silent. But he knew she was listening. Franz Fieber had pulled himself up the fence by his arms; he rolled over the top and fell onto the other side. He landed on his arms and the stumps of his legs, as softly as a cat. He crawled over the ground like an inchworm. Brushed aside a camelia bush. Behind the bush was a metal box. He signaled to Kasper.

"I'm measuring the impedance," he whispered. "If you put a conductor with the wrong impedance, the alarm will go off. Let the golden gift of gab flow."

"I haven't had children," said Kasper. "Have never been present at  a birth. But I think that door must be open at a birth. Just like when a person dies. For a moment, the door is open. And you can hear what'sbehind it. That's why you've made birthing your profession."

"Go home," said the intercom.

Franz Fieber rose inside the gate. His hands came through the bars. Punched the code pad. The gate opened.

"Something in you is like me," Kasper said into the microphone. "You're searching. You've been searching near a door."

"I want to be rich," said the intercom.

"Of course," he said. "We all do. Bach too."

Franz Fieber hobbled across the lawn on his crutches. At the foot of the hill you could see the elevator entrance, a rectangle of stainless steel.

"Very rich," said the intercom.

"That's true of all humans," said Kasper. "Look at Verdi. The Scrooge McDuck of classical music."

"It's too late," said the voice.

"It's never too late. And I know what I'm talking about. Everything has been too late for me. Several times."

Franz Fieber gave him a thumbs-up from the elevator.

"We subscribe to a security guard service," said the woman. "I'm going to call them now."

The connection went dead.

* * *

The elevator was cylindrical; it shot up like New Year's fireworks. "I could be approved by the Danish Insurance Association," said Franz Fieber. "They license security electricians. I do all the electrical work on the Jaguar myself. To stay in shape."

The elevator door opened. They stood in the midst of men's overcoats and women's furs. It was the first time Kasper had been in an elevator that opened directly into the entry, in the middle of the floor, like a sentry box.

He opened a double door and they found themselves in the living
room.

The room was elliptical, like the window, with a double curvature similar to a ship's hull. The floorboards were twenty inches wide. Whatever furniture Kasper had time to identify was Eames.

Lona Bohrfeldt sat on the sofa. In the middle of the room stood the owner of the Jeep; he looked like his vehicle, shiny black hair, traction on all four wheels, and not expecting anything to get in his way. Both he and the woman were in shock.

The man threw off his surprise and headed toward them. "We're very sensitive," he said. "We're expecting a child."

"Are you sure you're the father?" said Kasper.

The shock returned. But just for a moment. The man grabbed Kasper's shirt.

Many people have an incorrect image of clowns. They think that because a clown has a child's sweetness he also has a child's physique. Kasper hit him with the underside of his elbow, from below and upward. The man was unprepared for the blow; it pressed through his abdominal muscles and reached the lower tip of his lungs. He fell to his knees.

Kasper set an Eames stool behind the man. In the kitchen he found a basin, and filled a glass with water from the tap. Wrung out a tea towel. Franz Fieber was leaning against the wall.

Kasper placed the basin in front of the man. He handed the glass and tea towel to Franz Fieber. Sat down across from the woman. She had taken to wearing dark eyeliner since the last time he had seen her.

On closer inspection, it wasn't eyeliner. It was twenty-four, or more likely forty-eight, hours without sleep.

"What is it about the premature babies?" he asked.

"It's that some survive," she said.

Kasper moved his chair. So she could not see the man on the stool. It was part of the circus ring routine. From the standpoint of sound, married couples act like buffalo; with their rear ends toward each other they present a united front against a wicked world. If they are going to do their best for an audience, one must separate the love partners.

"It has always fascinated doctors and midwives," she said. "In the past, when one treated newborns more summarily, it regularly happened that premature babies who were declared dead and taken from the mother came to life and screamed. They wanted to live. And to be loved."

"So you went looking. For someone who might know where those  babies come from. Why some come into the world with such a strong will to live."

She nodded.

"And so you contacted the Institute. You contacted the Blue Lady."

"They suggested that I follow twelve children. At that time they were between six months and four years old. Of various nationalities. But they came together at the Institute once a year. I was to analyze their births. All the obstetrical details. Also facts that are otherwise never reported. The relationship between the father and mother. People present at the birth. Even the weather. And then I was to monitor their general health."

The sorrow around her grew denser. A mother close to giving birth should not have sounded like that; it bordered on resignation. "You sold the information to Kain," said Kasper. "He financed you. He must have financed the clinic."

She leaned forward as far as she could, given her stomach, and hid her face. The man on the floor leaned over the stool and threw up in the basin.

Kasper rose and walked over to the window. The view was unique. Not like Denmark. Mountainlike. You looked down the whole stretch of coastline, from Vedbæk to Amager.

There was a telescope by the window, an astronomical telescope, very powerful; he put his eye to the ocular and the field of vision vibrated nervously. In focus was a polished blue emerald in a black setting. It was a lighted swimming pool; it must be Taarbæk Sanatorium, a combination of private hospital and spa that had been built while he was out of the country. He had heard of it, but never seen it.

He turned the telescope. Found Konon's tower. There was light in the two top floors.

He took out the map that had been attached to the consignment note. The light was in the administrative offices.

"You were supposed to examine the children," he said. "During the past few days. That's what they were going to use you for. They were going to use a doctor."

"Two," she said. "Professor Frank and me."

"From the Mind Institute?"

She nodded.

Kasper looked over at Franz Fieber.

"Øster Void Street," he said. "Next to the botanical garden. In the buildings that were once the Copenhagen Observatory."

Kasper turned the telescope. Found Rosenborg Castle. The Copenhagen Observatory was the city's highest point, right next to the castle. He found the observatory tower. Focused sharply. Around and outside the tower, glass offices had been built, like greenhouses.

"Where did you examine them?"

"I'll lose everything," she said.

Her face was white, almost fluorescent.

"We all lose everything anyway," said Kasper. "We have just one option. We can try to lose in a somewhat housebroken manner."

He was glad that both Franz Fieber and the kneeling father of the child were present. It gave him a sense of having a slightly bigger audience. For these brilliant rejoinders.

"Look at me," he said. "I don't have an øre. I've lost everything. No wife. No children. My career ended. A deportation order. Wanted by the police in twelve countries. But I'm in the process of cleaning up my life. Can you see that? That somewhere deep within me there's a growing honesty?"

"I think you look like a bum," she said.

He drew erect.

"They brought the children here," she said. "Their condition was good. They're still alive. They're going to be used for something or other. It has to do with the earthquakes. I don't know what."

Fie adjusted the telescope. On the roof of the Konon building were two davits. On wheels. Behind them, a machine shed.

"What kind of a business is Konon?"

"Officially, a financial institution. But they deal only with options."

"Where is Kain?"

She shook her head.

"What about the murder?" she asked.

"The police believe there is a connection between a series of kidnappings. One of the children has been found. Tortured and strangled."

He was on his way out. She followed him.

"I want to make things good. I want to be able to look my child in the eye."

"Wait until after the baby is born. We who are making a penitential pilgrimage take one step at a time."

Kasper helped the kneeling man to stand up and get over to the sofa. On the coffee table lay a small stack of typed pages. "What," he asked, "was common to all the births?"

"They were harmonious. Calmer than the average. And then there was something about the weather."

She stood close to him.

"There were rainbows," she said. "In every instance, those who assisted at the birth had seen rainbows. Outside the window. I spoke with them independently of one another. There were rainbows at night too. There are nocturnal rainbow phenomena. Haloes around the moon. White rainbows in the night sky, moonlight reflected in cloud formations."

He opened the door to the elevator.

"We must hope there was gold at the end," he said. "Of the rainbows."

She blocked the door.

"Those two children," she said, "the boy and the girl--they aren't ordinary children."

He didn't know what he should say.

"They were calm," she said. "Not happy. But much too calm. I can't explain it. But it wasn't natural. They should have been depressed."

He removed her hand from the elevator door, gently.

"Kain," she said. "He owns the sanatorium. That's where he is. He telephoned from there. Five minutes ago."

"How do you know where the telephone call came from?"

"The sound of the large Jacuzzis. I could hear them."

He caught a sound from her system. Deep, old. As if from a persistent longing.

"You were born prematurely," he said.

"In the seventh month. Declared dead. Laid in the rinse room. Where they say I pounded on the lid that had been placed over the tray. When I began as a midwife there was a retiring obstetrician who remembered my case. He called me Rinse Room Lona."

He couldn't stop his hand. It tore itself loose, floated up, stroked her cheek. Knowing full well that one should be very cautious about caressing pregnant women in front of their husbands.

"Franz and I," he said, "we're wild about those who want to survive."

"I'm not the fearful type," she said. "But I'm afraid of him. Of Kain."

* * *

Kasper motioned; Franz Fieber pulled the van over at a rest stop. Kasper pointed to the flat metal flask.

"How about a little more lighter fluid," he said, "for us two bachelors, after our meeting with the young couple in happy circumstances?"

Franz Fieber poured; the aroma of fresh grapes filled the vehicle.  "What does it sound like inside a person who has killed a child?"

Kasper would have crawled a long way around to avoid the question. But the young man's yellow eyes shone intensely in the dark.

"Twice in my life," he said, "I've sat across from a person who had killed a child; both were artists. One had run down a child by accident, the other had beaten his child to death. Around each of them there was silence."

He sensed helplessness. Confronted by great horror and great miracles--the
Mass in B-Minor
, world wars--we are powerless; there is nothing an individual person can do.

But he could hear that the young man's helplessness was greater than his own. And in this lost world does not the person with one eye have a duty to try to help the blind man?

"There are two types of silence," said Kasper, "or at least that's how it has sounded to me. There is the high silence, the silence behind prayer. The silence when one is close to the Divine. The silence that is the dense, unborn presence of all sounds. And then there is the other silence. Hopelessly far from God. And from other people. The silence of absence. The silence of loneliness."