The Quiet Girl (7 page)

He walked back and forth along the lake for nearly fifteen minutes. In order to try to hear her. In order to catch his breath. He succeeded in neither.

He got into the car. Dialed his father's number. Maximillian answered immediately. His father whispered.

"I'm at the casino; you're not allowed to have cell phones turned on. Why the hell are you calling me--did you wet your bed?"

"Despite your decrepitude," said Kasper, "can you still get into the central registry for the Department of Motor Vehicles?"

He gave Maximillian the number. The line went dead.

He had driven home slowly.
 
 

11

A sound shattered his memories and restored the trailer; it was the telephone. At first there was only a hoarse breathing on the line, as if the caller needed thirty seconds to recoup the oxygen it cost to make such an effort.

"I'll be completely well on Friday," said Maximillian. "I've found the best Filipino healer--he gets marvelous results. I'm having him flown here. Within a week, I'll be checked out of the hospital."

Kasper didn't say anything.

"What are you blubbering about?" asked Maximillian. "Next summer we'll be doing cartwheels on the beach."

There was quiet on the line.

"The license plate number," said the sick man. "That you gave me. It's a restricted number. In the central registry. Described as 'stolen' and 'investigation in progress.' With a link to the police commissioner. And the Intelligence Service."

The hoarse breathing became labored for a few seconds.

"Josef Kain?" asked Kasper.

As a boy he had learned great things about improvisation from his father. Maximillian Krone had been able to get up from a devastating quarrel with Rasper's mother, or a twelve-course dinner with his hunting pals that had lasted six hours, and go straight into court or straight into the Industrial Council.

But now he was silent.

Father and son listened to each other in silence.

"The occult," said Maximillian. "That was supposedly part of the reason they established Department H. Damn. It shows you how lily-livered the police are becoming."

"And is it found in the circus?"

"It isn't found anywhere."

"There was a woman. Both you and Mother mentioned her. Even at that time she was old. Something about birds. And a remarkable ability to remember things."

His father didn't seem to hear him.

"Vivian is standing here beside me," said Maximillian. "She says you and I should talk together. 'Why the hell should I talk with that idiot,' I say. 'He collapses. He's as soft as shit.' But she insists."

"She says you're sick."

"She's the head of the hospice program. She has a professional interest in convincing people that they are at death's door."

The hoarse breathing again became labored.

"She wants to talk to you."

The receiver changed hands.

"There was no Lona in the Midwives Association register," said the woman. "But I had a thought. There was a midwife whose name may have been Lona. It was fifteen years ago. Quite young. Talented. A lot of original ideas. Very critical of the system. Led efforts to establish experimental birth environments. The environment rooms here at Rigshospital. The underwater-birth rooms in Gentofte. At some point she completed medical studies. Became a very young chief physician. Obstetrics. That's why I didn't think of her as a midwife. Very aware of economic issues. Left her position at the hospital. Worked first for the pharmaceutical industry. Still does, as far as I know. In addition, opened a very exclusive--and well-patronized-- maternity clinic in Charlottenlund. Could it be her?"

"What was her last name?"

"It's so long ago. I think it was Bohrfeldt."

Kasper looked at his knuckles. They were white like a medical-school skeleton. He loosened his grip.

"I don't know," he said. "It's not too likely. But thanks very much."

He hung up.

* * *

There was nothing in the ordinary telephone directory. But he found the address in the Yellow Pages; it was the only listing under "Maternity Clinics."

It was at the beginning of Strand Road. The ad showed a vignette of the building. He unfolded KlaraMaria's drawing and placed it beside the telephone book. She had included many details. The stairway curving up toward what must have been the main entrance of a mansion. The number of windows. The characteristic way each window was divided into six panes.

The address had five telephone numbers listed: main office, on call, pediatrician, labs, infirmary.

For a moment he considered calling the police. Then he rang for a taxi.

From the small cabinet above the toilet he took out a large bottle of pills; from the bottle he took two pills, as big as communion wafers, twelve hundred milligrams of caffeine in each, with warm greetings on the prescription from La Mour, the Royal Theater's physician. He filled a glass with water. In fifteen minutes the pills would commence spreading an outer layer of big-band wakefulness over the inner counterpoint of alcohol and fatigue.

Just to be sure, he took out two more pills. He gave a toast in the mirror. To all the doctors who, like Lona Bohrfeldt, help us into the world. Those at the Rigshospital hospice, who go with us out of it. And those like La Mour, who help us to endure the waiting time.

A vehicle turned from the Ring Road. It couldn't be a taxi because he thought he heard twelve cylinders. But it slowed down, searching. He swallowed the tablets with water. Put the glass upside down on the shelf.

Twice he had shared a dressing room with Jacques Tati, the second time in Stockholm after the master had lost everything on Playtime and had gone back to variety shows. After removing his makeup he had placed his glass upside down; Kasper had asked why.

"The dust,
la poussère
."

"We'll be back tomorrow."

The mime had smiled. The smile had not reached his eyes.

"We can hope so," he said. "But can we plan on it?"
 
 

12

It was the first time he had seen a Jaguar used as a taxi. The rear door burst open by itself, the backseat took him into its embrace like a woman. The car smelled like an expensive harness, but the light was strange. The driver was a young man wearing a clerical collar. Kasper tried to determine what sort of man he was by his sound. Probably from a small farm on Mors Island, studying theology without any financial help from home. Theology department during the day, taxi at night, and a use for every krone he could scrape together.

"Strand Road," said Kasper. "And as far as I'm concerned you don't have to start the meter."

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.