The Quiet Girl (25 page)

"I have a couple of errands to do," he said. "And then I'll come and collect the payment."

"We'll be glad to see you."

He hung up.

* * *

The elevator worked; they rode down three floors, stopped, the door opened. Franz Fieber stood outside. He got in. The elevator continued down. Franz Fieber stretched up and looked at the top of Rasper's head.

"Your head is split open," he said. "You've got a fractured skull."

Kasper gave Franz Fieber his other arm; they half carried him across the yard. He could hear blood dripping on the flagstones, a brittle, slightly ringing sound, very different from drops of water, because of the fluid's greater viscosity.

The moment they walked into the shadow of the outer wall, floodlights illuminated the yard. Through his feet he could feel many running steps. They opened the door and walked into the glass booth. The green admiral was still shaken. Kasper could hear that. But it was nothing compared to what he now became. He stared at Kasper, at the woman, recognized her, could not move. Kasper felt he needed to say a few words. When we have inconvenienced our fellow human beings, we can't leave them completely confused.

There are many people who believe they have bought a ticket to Gilbert and Sullivan in this life. And only when it's almost too late do they discover that existence is a piece of doomsday music by Schnittke instead.

"Aske didn't think the egg was big enough," Kasper said. "And you know his temper."

* * *

Out on the sidewalk Kasper let go of the woman's arm; she just stood there. He and Franz Fieber reached the van. The woman behind him hadn't moved. Kasper managed to get up into the front seat.

"We're going to take a ring road," he said.

"You're bleeding to death," said Franz Fieber.

"All bleeding from the veins can be stopped. With gentle but firm pressure maintained for ten minutes."

"You've got only two hands."

At the end of Sundkrog Street they turned north. The lights all blurred together before Kasper's eyes. Franz Fieber made a U-turn; Kasper was thrown against the door.

"A police blockade," said the young man.

They drove along Strand Boulevard. Continued along Jagt Road. Kasper found a stack of linen. He folded cloth napkins like a compress. Tried to tie them on his head with tea towels. As fast as he applied them they got soaked with blood. He was beginning to run a fever. The young man beside him started to cry.

That was the trouble with apprenticeships. When the master lights the afterburner the student may get flattened. Just look at the Bach sons. None of them ever rose to their father's level. And think of Jung. He could never completely wipe away the footprints after Freud had walked all over him.

"Both children are alive," said Kasper.

"You need to go to a hospital."

"Later. We have a couple of quick errands."

"Just look at you."

"We're so close. I say, like Saint Thérà¨se of Lisieux, '
Je choisis tout
,' I want to have everything."

Kasper rolled down the window. The fever was a reaction to physical injury; he remembered it from his accidents in the ring, from when he was still performing as an acrobat. The cool wind helped. His weariness was a more serious matter; it was related to the loss of blood.

They drove along Jagt Road, on the border between central and greater Copenhagen. Turned onto Tagen Road, drove past the lakes. The city had never sounded like this before. It had acquired a bit of focus. The sound reminded him of Christmas Eve, of the times a decisive final soccer match was on TV. But darker. Far more tense. People listened toward the barricaded area. Toward the possibility of new earthquakes. They listened in solidarity. It was, however reluctant one is to say it, the solidarity of people who see in one another's eyes that perhaps they will die together. Pater Pio once told believers that the best place to pray is in an airplane during a crash. "If you truly unite in prayer then," he said, "you cannot help but realize the Divine."

"I've met many crazy people," said Franz Fieber. "But so help me, I've never ..."

Kasper pointed; the vehicle turned from Øster Void Street, past the Geological Museum, up a 15 percent incline and through the low, open wrought-iron gate of the Mind Institute.

There was light inside the glass door. A blond Prince Valiant was sitting at the desk.

"Please drive all the way into the office," said Kasper. Franz Fieber shook his head.

"In my condition," said Kasper, "it's nice to not have to go out into the cold."

Franz Fieber pressed down on the accelerator. The van struck the glass door, broke through it like a paper screen, stopped with the front of the van inside the office.

Kasper struggled down from the high seat. Seated himself in a chair by the desk. The man on the other side of the desk was immobilized.

When Kasper was a child many professors had had an unfortunate clang that made people look around for something to plug their ears with--rugs, for example. At that time, having an academic career required neurotic, biased mental overexertion. Kasper had met professors who were in the audience with Maximillian at premier performances. They had been fragmented.

Time had changed the sound; the man on the other side of the desk had a broad spectrum. But still.

"Many artists," said Kasper, "are afraid of academics. But not me. My favorite figure in commedia dell'arte is Il Dottore. Do you know him? 'Learning can cure everything.'"

The blond man cast a sidelong glance toward the shattered front door. Kasper could hear him calculating his chances for a successful escape.

"I don't recommend it," said Kasper. "I don't have anything to lose."

The sound across from him gave up.

"What were you supposed to dor"

The other man didn't answer.

"You were supposed to give scientific luster to the demonstration. What did they demonstrate?"

The blond man looked out at the van. Franz Fieber was still sitting behind the wheel. The doors and windows were locked.

"There's no witness to this," he said.

"God hears everything," said Kasper. "But He doesn't testify in municipal court."

The professor moistened his lips.

"They didn't demonstrate anything. The little girl just said, 'There won't be any more earthquakes.' There were twenty buyers. Foreigners. Everything was translated into English. That was all. It took five minutes."

Kasper could hear he was telling the truth.

"What do you get out of it?"

"Scholarly information."

"Can we get a little closer to the truth?"

The professor looked down at the desk.

"You are extremely talented," said Kasper. "I can hear that. You also came with King Kong to try to bribe me. You aren't the violent type. But I am. Just look at me. I've come directly from the battlefield."

The professor looked at him.

"The university is a flat structure," he said. "If you want to move up in earnest, it has to be outside the university."

There is a pleasant firmness of tone when one is in harmony with oneself. Even when it's a weak ethic one is resonating with. "What can the children do?"

"We've scanned them. They have interesting brain waves. That's all."

"What can the Blue Lady do? Mother Maria."

The man's tone changed to something Kasper remembered from the marketplace, a tone that preceded steer trading.

Kasper rose, with difficulty. On the desk in front of the professor lay a blue folder. He drummed on it.

"There is free exchange of information among institutions of higher learning," said the professor.

The folder was from the police department; Kasper recognized the cover from Asta Borello's office.

"That's nice," said Kasper.

"We could do business. You worked with Danish Technical University. In the eighties. At the Institute for Mathematical Acoustics. As a consultant, it says. In connection with planning and renovating large concert halls. They evaluated you. Here it says you could perceive variations in three- to thirty-five-thousand-hertz frequency fields. One-hundredth-of-a-decibel changes in the sound pressure level. That's quite unusual, if it's true. It says that they can't understand it. That they constructed one-hundredth models. Put you in them. And you were able to tell them immediately what was needed. Whether they should pour sine profiles into the concrete. Or some damn thing. Is that true?"

The post-traumatic shock from the van's entrance into the office was about to wear off the man's system. That attested to his robustness. Kasper felt a touch of respect for the entourage Kain had assembled. "They were dreaming," he said. "And it was in my early youth."

"They write that you say physical sound is only a door. Behind it is another sound. A world of sounds. Is that true? Could you tell me a little about it? Maybe I might know something about the children in return. And about the
staretza
too."

Now Kasper heard the other man's misfortune. The theoretician's longing to rescind his separation from reality.

"You got the folder from Moerk," said Kasper. "You've bet on two horses. Or on three. You've worked for Kain. And had your time at the Institute. And kept Department H informed."

The other man's tone began to get thinner.

"You wanted to try to avoid anything happening to the children," said Kasper. "But you also wanted to be near the money. And to Kain's reason for getting the children. While at the same time, you wanted to look out for yourself. You tried to bet on all the horses. The entire track at once."

Along the back wall of the room were showcases containing optical instruments, possibly from the time the building had functioned as an observatory. And the world had been simpler. Perhaps.

"We humans," said Kasper. "We bet on too many horses. That way one never fully comes up into the light. But on the other hand, never fully down into the dark either. We stay right here. Where it's just clear enough to be able to fumble our way forward."

He hoisted himself into the van.

"It's the reptile brain," said the professor, "that contains acoustic memory. They say reptiles can also recognize the sound of prey. That is a primitive function in the deepest sense."

"You went along to see if I was for sale. To see if you would strike anything firm. When the instruments were thrust in deeply."

"Everyone can be bought. That's the ultimate reality."

Behind the anger Kasper heard the despair.

"I think you were the one," said Kasper. "Who killed the little girl. I checked with Immigration. You were in Nepal at that time."

The man leaped up like a jack-in-the-box, flailing his arms and legs.

"It was Ernst. Josef's bodyguard. I had no idea that was going to happen. I was miles away when it occurred."

Then the professor sank back down into the chair.

Kasper listened. The other man had possibly told the truth.

"I tried to explain something to them," he said. "At the university. We orient ourselves in measurable aural space because of the subtle time difference between when the right and left ear perceive the sound. But in the larger context, a little information has disappeared. The actual sound is perceived by both ears at the same time. By the mind, so to speak. And it doesn't get lost. It exists outside time and space. And it's free. You don't have to buy it. All you have to do is prick up your ears."

The man on the other side of the desk suddenly appeared much older. As if he had aged in five minutes. His hair looked white.

"I'm afraid," he said, "that Kain will fly the children out of the country."
 
 

12

They were out on the Ring Road.

On the seat beside Kasper, Franz Fieber sniffled. It is important, even while making large arm movements, to remember to show consideration for what is close at hand. Bach also did that. In the midst of constructing his cosmic tonal cathedral he had shown concern for each individual brick. A preoccupation with always making everything sound good. Gentleness with Maria Barbara, with Anna Magdalena, with the children, one could hear that. Kasper laid a reassuring hand on the young man's shoulder.

"In a few minutes," he said, "both children will be sitting between us.

He stroked the trembling muscles; his hand left a sticky trail of blood. They passed Roskilde Road, Glostrup, the first fields. Kasper pointed; the van turned left down a dirt road just before the go-cart track. The road became steep, and then stopped. They parked on an artificial embankment across from the water purification plant. Below the plant lay the courtyard and stables, utterly quiet, with only a single floodlight on.

"You can't go down there. They're waiting for you."

Kasper crawled out of the van.

"I'm flowing with Tao."

"How can you know that?"

The yellow eyes had given up on him.

"I can hear it. It's the sound of a gentle fair wind."
 
 

13

Between the field and the road there was a thick hedge of poplars; between the poplars and the yard a vehicle was parked. Kasper got down on all fours.

The car was half a tone too high. Half a tone is not much, but to a person with absolute hearing it is annoying. Throughout the seventies Kasper had wondered about Richter's recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier, it had been half a tone too high. At first Kasper had thought it must be the record, or the master tape; there must have been a faulty transposition. Later, Richter's recording of Prokofiev's sonatas had trickled through the Iron Curtain; they also had been half a tone too high. So Kasper had realized there was a reason behind it.

When a car has contents, people or baggage, the number of natural vibrations rises, or it feels like that. Kasper crawled sideways, and got the car between him and the floodlight; in it sat two men.

The explanation came first in the nineties, after the only long interview with Richter was published. Toward the end of the interview the great pianist said that age, in addition to the other damage it had wrought, had lowered his keynote perception almost half a tone.