The Quiet Girl - Peter Hoeg

by Peter Høeg

  It was delightful. When you have reached the age of forty-two, you live an ever greater part of your life in memories.

  * * *

  It had been night, the performance over, Helene Krone still in tulle with a towel around her hips; he could hear the whisper of terry cloth. He had known that her shoulders must be naked. Most of the other women protected themselves from the sun; his mother inhaled the light. It was shortly after the accident and he was completely blind. He heard the sound of her silver jewelry. They told him it was a night with a moon. He knew that in the moonlight the silver against her brown skin would be white. No one had ever said so, but he knew she had gotten the jewelry from earlier lovers. That its constant, melodic tinkling was an ongoing challenge for Maximillian, a memento mori, as if there were a skull lying on the little table where she placed the soup.

  She had baked food in a cast-iron pot that she set directly on the coals in the little Morsø wood-burning stove. It was the mid-seventies, and half of the circus grounds didn't have electricity for the trailers.

  The air was fragrant with flowers. And around them were many herb pots; they filled most of the trailer when they were traveling. Helene Krone had loved flowers. Everywhere they performed for more than three days she had planted something or other, just to see the sprouts come up before they had to leave. Maximillian had known that his only chance to draw her away from the circus was to tempt her with a garden. He had tried, but did not succeed.

  They carried Kasper outside. His mother gave him soup and bread. He was only able to use his right arm.

  He was able to hear her movements; they were easy and natural. Even though it was night. Even though she had already had a sixteen=hour working day, including four hours of hard physical training. Even though anxiety about him sang in her constantly. Despite all that, she was natural. In the way wild animals share qualities with Bach's music: a naturalness where one doesn't dream of changing a single note because it simply cannot be any other way. True freedom is freedom from having to choose, because everything is perfect just as it is.

  Maximillian Krone leaned back and accepted the food without ever saying thank you. Appreciation was built into the situation.

  Kasper could hear the intimacy between his parents, and also the passion, the caution. He would not have had a word for it. But he was able to sense that if you want to have the experience of a home that's meaningful and open and natural, like Bach's music and the big cats on the savannah, it costs something; it costs the risk entailed in living your life near two poles with highly different voltages.

  Maximillian fell asleep. He collapsed with exhaustion. Helene Krone awakened him gently, very gently. Without fully waking up, he rose, staggered inside, and tumbled into bed.

  Kasper listened to his mother as she cleared up. He could hear her weariness. But behind it there was a more powerful sound that she wasn't able to decode.

  She picked him up, carried him inside, and put him to bed. He heard her lift the chimney glass and blow out the candle.

  He wasn't able to sleep. He lay in the dark and thought about death. He was afraid to die.

  So it had not been true, what he told Stina. That the sound of SheAlmighty had made him fearless. That had not been true. He had lain in the dark and been afraid.

  Then he had heard a sound, right next to him. It was his mother. She seated herself on the edge of the bed and he heard the soft rustle of her nightgown. He knew that if he had been able to see, it would have looked as if she were wearing moonlight.

  Perhaps it hadn't been one particular night; he felt there must have been many. But nevertheless, behind them all somehow there had been just one long night.

  She sat there a long time without saying anything, just holding his hand. Then she began to sing, very softly. She sang often, but she hadn't sung to him since he was a little boy.

  When she began to sing, the sound behind her came again. It was huge, larger than any single person. And it was all-pervasive. He identified it now. It was the full volume of a mother's love for her child. And not just one mother. All mothers' love for all children.

  * * *

  Perhaps he had slept. And then awakened. Perhaps he was in the sickroom. Perhaps it was another night with Helene Krone.

  She hadn't sung anymore. She had told him things.

  About her childhood. About animals they had owned, and ones she had heard about.

  "My mother, your grandmother," she said, "had an act as a white clownesse in Austria, before and during the war. There were dogs in the act. They had a terrier. She brought it along to Denmark. I remember one of her puppies. When that puppy and I ran through tall grass or grain, every fifteen feet or so it had to jump high into the air to see me."

  As she talked, Kasper listened through her voice. He was able to hear the artists she talked about; he was able to determine their musical key. He discovered that in this universe every person's sound offers access to all other sounds.

  He understood that those his mother talked about were dead. His grandmother was dead. The other people were dead, the dog was dead. Nevertheless, his mother's voice was a door into their sounds. He could hear that. But he did not understand it.

  "There was a girl," said Helene Krone. "Karen. We were the same age."

  Kasper listened in through the name. He sensed that his memory had taken him to this tonal location so he would remember this.

  "She was the one who got me to switch from tightrope to slack line," said Helene Krone. "We had winter quarters by one of the lakes near Holte. Opposite the grounds was a marlstone quarry; a rope was stretched across it. She said she wanted to learn to walk across the rope. She got me to sail across the quarry in a floating wooden box. We couldn't swim. The grown-ups discovered what we'd done. They were frightened, and decided we should learn to swim. The closest swimming pool was by Pure Lake. We bicycled over there, just past Gammelgård and Skovbrynet. One day Karen said, 'You should meet the sisters.' They lived in a convent by one of the lakes. It was actually just a big house. They gave us tea and hard cookies. Which became soft when we dunked them in the tea. There was a woman. I remember her as being old; she must have been fifty. 'Is there anything you want to ask about?' she said.

  "I trusted her. She smelled good. That was how I knew if I trusted grown-ups."

  Helene Krone had laughed in the darkness, softly, so as not to awaken her husband. Then she continued speaking.

  "'Yes,' 1 said. 'There's something I'd like to ask about. Sometimes I'm afraid the world is a dream.'

  " 'What do the grown-ups say?' the nun said. 'When you ask them about that?'

  "She said 'the grown-ups,' not 'father and mother.' She understood how I looked at the world.

  '"They say I can pinch my arm,' I told her. 'They say that if it hurts, then I know I'm awake.'

  "The nun dunked a cookie in the tea. Slowly. Perhaps it was the first time I met a grown-up with absolutely no impatience. 'And what do you think about that?' she asked.

  "I told her I wondered: What if the fact it hurts is something I'm dreaming too?

  "I don't think she answered me. But when we were going to leave she walked with us out to our bicycles. They had real rubber tires, even if it was during the war. The circus had a stock of wheels on hand for the trick cyclists.

  "The woman stroked my head. 'If this was a dream,' she said, 'would you want to wake up?'

  "'Only if I was sure my mother and father would be there,' I said. "She laughed quietly, in a friendly way. I didn't understand why she was laughing. 'You're welcome to come back again,' she said. 'Whenever you wish. You can come with Karen.'

  "But I never went back. Until I took you with me to the church on Bred Street. To see her. The nun. Mother Rabia."

  4

  He woke up; someone was sitting on his bed. He thought at first it was his mother. But it was the African.

  "How long have I been here?"

  "Fourteen days. You've had a high fever. The bullet wound
became infected. You've been given penicillin. The infection is improving."

  He didn't ask about KlaraMaria. He could hear the tension in her system. Next to the bed was a folded wheelchair.

  "A signal," he said. "A sound, once it's sent out, never stops. It goes out to the most distant parts of the universe. Perhaps it changes its form, from mechanical vibrations to heat waves to light, but the impulse continues. I can hear other people, certain other people, even when their bodies are somewhere else. It seems as though part of their sound is within the audible frequency field. Another part is ultrasound. Another is infrasound. And some of the sound is nonphysical. I can hear KlaraMaria. She's under a lot of strain. She's at the limit of what her system can stand. Even hers."

  "Nobody can hear so far away."

  "Separation. She's afraid of separation. From all of you. From me. From something I can't identify. Maybe they want to take her away."

  The African could not grow pale; her skin was too dark for that. But he could hear the life drain out of the surface of her skin.

  "The police can do nothing more," he said. "You people can do nothing more. But I can do something. With your help. We'll need to take a little trip away from here."

  "You're confined to bed."

  "Help me get into the wheelchair. People have achieved great things from a wheelchair. Hawking, Ironside. Ireno Fuentes."

  She was no longer there. Two other nuns had taken her place. Far away he heard the sound of the great pulse. Perhaps it was his own. He sank toward it.

  * * *

  KlaraMaria was sitting with him. At first he thought she was real and he felt very happy. She must have escaped. Then he noticed that she was sitting on a church pew. And there was no pew in his sickroom; it must be a hallucination, a memory. But sometimes it is precisely the memories that keep us alive.

  She sat with her profile toward him. As she had sat the third time he had seen her. The third, and next-to-last, time.

  * * *

  It had been two weeks after her second visit, after his first meeting with the Blue Lady. He had gone to Bred Street, to Nevsky Church. The church was locked; a plaque on the door said the building was open only two days a week for visitors to the church, the Russian library, and the bathhouse. He had gone there again the following day. At first he was the only visitor. A man with white hair and beard and a thick Russian accent had shown him around the church.

  The acoustics had a softness that was very unusual for churches; he felt an urge to recommend it be included in Beraneks Concert Halls and Opera Houses: Music, Acoustics, and Architecture, which was--along with Eckehart--his favorite reading, a kind of acoustic pornography filled with profound sweetness. The old man who guided him exhibited a spirit of gentleness unusual for men. But also weariness.

  On the way out, Kasper heard the silence.

  "Who is in the building besides us?" he asked.

  The man's face was expressionless. Kasper repeated the question.

  "Nobody. Just a child."

  Kasper walked back through the church. KlaraMaria was sitting far up near the altar. Her eyes were closed. He stood behind her for perhaps two minutes.

  "Well, Cousin Gus," she said. "What are you staring at?"

  * * *

  They had walked back together to the old man. By the door Kasper pulled out a thousand-kroner bill, folded it slowly, and put it in the collection box.

  "How is this place administered?" he asked. "Who is the highest religious authority?"

  "The church is under the White Russian patriarchate."

  Kasper waited. The man looked around. As if to make sure no one else was listening.

  "Before the Revolution, the congregation belonged under the metropolitan of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. There's a controversy going on now."

  Kasper heard the sorrow beneath the old man's weariness. "And the other Danish congregations?"

  "They've joined other synods."

  "Won't they be expelled? Excommunicated?"

  The man opened the door.

  "The Eastern Orthodox Church doesn't excommunicate. It's decentralized. The patriarch in Constantinople is primus inter pares. But each congregation can, in principle, declare itself autonomous."

  "And the Rabia Institute?"

  The sorrow and fatigue turned into fear.

  "They've chosen a woman as the metropolit. That means they have left the Church. A woman can't rise higher than deaconess. They're in conflict with the Holy Scriptures."

  For a moment the three of them stood in the doorway. On the border between Bred Street, with its traffic, restaurants, auction houses, hotels, and glittering prostitution. And a church building that leaned back toward a two-thousand-year-old tradition and a Middle Ages reality that was on the verge of disappearing forever. Kasper found it hard to resist an impulse to pick up the old man and rock him in his arms.

  "Thanks for the guided tour," he said.

  * * *

  He had parked on the top level of the parking garage on Dronningens Tvær Street. KlaraMaria walked close beside him. He had always been fascinated by the different ways people walked with someone else. The girl was self-contained as she walked and, at the same time, totally attentive to the rhythms of his system; it felt as if they were singing a silent duet.

  In the parking garage they stood for a moment by the car. Beneath them they could see the Nevsky Church dome.

  "Our friend," said Kasper. "Little Mother Maria. There must be hair on her chest. Under her push-up bra. She's a politician who has broken away from the party."

  The girl looked up at him.

  "Big Mother Maria," she said. "And she hasn't broken away. It's the others who haven't been able to follow along."

  He heard himself blushing before he felt it. At first he didn't understand why. Then he realized that he had been reprimanded by a child.

  * * *

  They drove north along Strand Road, and didn't say a word until they reached their destination. Outside the grounds of Darf Blünow's Stables and Ateliers the girl spoke.

  "I'd like to park the car."

  He stopped, pushed the seat back; she sat on his lap. She could just see out the windshield.

  She could not reach the pedals. But she had no problem with the gearshift. She must have driven before.

  "I'm practicing," she said. "For when you give me a spaceship."

  They stopped by the trailer. The car's motor was still running.

  She leaned back against him, her head resting against his chest. A deep peace enveloped him, a feeling of both freedom and release, as in the last movement of the "Chaconne." The deep intimacy between them had no restrictions, no relation to physical reality. He thought perhaps it could sometimes feel like this to have a child.

  "Will you go in the spaceship with me?" she asked.

  He nodded. They let their imaginations play together; it was her delightful little joke. Right now he would have said yes to anything whatsoever.

  She pulled back the steering wheel. Then he heard the silence. It spread spherically around the girl, reached his body, enveloped it, reached the chassis of the car; the chassis faded to a pastel color. He gripped the steering wheel as if to avoid a collision. There was nothing to avoid; the phenomenon was gone, as if it had never existed. But for a moment, an infinitesimal moment, there had been no physical limits, only the silence. That, and the deep solidarity with the child in front of him.

  "What was that?" he said.

  She got out of the car. Her face was expressionless. He came after her, though his legs could barely support him. He had to speak. Isn't that what we should use words for first and foremost: to preserve reality, so we don't have to see what's hiding on the other side?

  "Danish culture," he said, "is full of musical jewels about small boys who ride away on a horse with their mothers. But there aren't many about small girls. Who fly away with middle-aged men in a Lotus Elise."

  "I'm hungry," she said.
r />   * * *

  He fried vegetables for her, cooked truffle rice, added a little cream and a curry blend of fennel and dried onion that thickened the sauce. He had learned to do this from Stina. Each time he prepared and consumed one of the dishes she had taught him he felt both joy and sorrow, as if he were taking part in some sort of erotic communion.

  "I want to teach you a song," said the girl.

  She began to sing. Her voice was a little hoarse, but she sang perfectly in tune. He stiffened. The song was "Bona Nox." He had taught that to Stina; she had loved it. It encompassed both Mozart's ancient refinement and his newborn innocence. And his love for Bach's fugues.

  He joined in; they sang together. Tears came to his eyes, but he didn't understand why. He wept as he sang, his tears dripping into the curry sauce. He listened into the fact that every person will lose everyone else. In a little while the girl before him would be gone, and he could not bear it.

  Someone touched him--it was the girl. She reached up and stroked his wet cheeks.

  "Actually," she said, "there's really nothing to fear."

  * * *

  He had driven her home; it was May and the night sky was still light. They stood outside the fence around the Institute.

  "Who taught you the song?" he asked.

  Her face became expressionless. He heard the springtime around them. All his life he had loved the heavy, turgid sound of growth. But not now. Now it reminded him of separation. "What's the opposite of never seeing someone again?" she said.

  "Reunion."

  She took his hand. "For us," she said, "there's really no goodbye. Only reunion."

  He had no idea what she meant. It was a solemn moment. He was aware of feeling anxious; when you're up high, you get smashed flat if you fall.

  "You'll come back," she said. "Mother Maria says you will come. She says she has promised you something. She says you're going to get a carrot. Like a donkey, she says. In order to know what direction you should go."

  He grew dizzy with anger.

  The girl straddled the fence.

  "I've got a carrot for you," she said. "Come back. And I'll tell you who taught me the song."