by Peter Høeg
She modulated to "Bona Nox." Her voice was both affectionate and protective.
He felt the silence open. Like a great hand that was preparing to pick him up. He opened his eyes. The Blue Lady leaned over him. She wiped his forehead with a damp cloth.
"You've slept for twenty-four hours," she said. "You will survive. Again."
* * *
He expanded his sense perception. The surroundings were only faintly audible, almost gone. He knew that was due to the presence of the abbess. He had experienced the phenomenon a few times before, first with his mother, and several instances with Maximillian. With a few partners in the ring. Then with Stina. With KlaraMaria. He had turned forty before he dared to fully believe it. That hearing is collective. When the contact between two people intensifies, the outer world first grows fainter, and then begins to disappear altogether. Because for these two people at that moment, all that exists in the universe is the other person. This is what began to happen now. A voice whispered; it was his voice.
"They've used her, perhaps also the boy, to predict the earthquakes; the children must have some sort of clairvoyance. They've bought up property in the inner city and they're going to sell it now, soon. They will keep the children alive at least until then. They need her--they need both of them. To make it seem credible that there won't be any more earthquakes. We have to get hold of the police."
"That won't be a problem," she said. "They can be here the moment we need them. You and Sister Gloria were seen."
The morning sun was very low, the color of white gold. The surface of the water was motionless, like tightly stretched tinfoil. The unmoving surface mirrored a second sun. The outskirts of the city were hidden by a narrow band of white mist. All outer sounds were drawn into the woman's listening.
They could have been in any mythological place in the world. She wanted to tell him something, without words, with her silence, but he did not understand.
"You have to eat," she said.
* * *
Sister Gloria brought him a tray, soup and bread. He said a short prayer, and then bit into the bread.
"It's good to say grace before you eat," he said. "The prayer allows you to go through a microscopic death and rebirth. You let yourself go into divine formlessness. And then you are re-created and resurrected as a newborn, with all your brain cells and all your taste buds and potency and hearing intact. Ideally, that is."
"Even if an archangel stood before you," said the African, "you wouldn't stop talking."
He took another bite of bread and thought about his mother. The bun was fresh from the oven; its crust was thin, smooth, and hard as glass. The crunch when his teeth bit into it told him that it was baked in a hot ceramic oven after having been brushed with a mixture of yogurt, oil, and sea salt. The smell was deep and complex, like a human body's.
"The first time I was here," he said, "a year ago, at night, you waited outside the Blue Lady's door. Why?"
"Mother Maria asked me to."
"When?"
"Earlier in the day."
It was beef soup; it tasted of eternal life and of the fact that all living beings consume one another.
"Earlier in the day she couldn't have known that I'd come."
"She knew it for years. We saw you on television. That was one of the first times I was in Denmark. Sometimes Mother Maria likes to look at television. Especially circus performances. We saw Cirque du Soleil. She asked who the clown was. One of the sisters said: 'He's Danish.' She said: 'He'll come to see us.' Just that. Nothing else. 'He'll come to see us here.'"
Kasper dipped his bread in the soup. Chewed mechanically.
"Mother Maria," said the African, "says some people think the great composers are saints who allowed themselves to be born among us. To help all of us. Then one can better understand. About Bach."
She was still dazed by the serenade. It was touching. On the other hand, it's important to help people get over their fascination.
"Also the great cooks," he said. "You must have one down in the kitchen. Now will you please leave Grandfather in peace? I need to digest my food."
* * *
The Blue Lady was in the room. He hadn't heard her come in.
"A person can't be in the circus for thirty-five years," he said, "without meeting killers. When I listened to the place within them from, which the murder was committed, I never heard the killers themselves. I heard possession. By something else. The question of guilt is complicated. In an acoustical sense."
She did not say anything.
He felt his anger rise.
"I've identified him," he said. "The man who murdered the child. I wanted to be able to take him out of circulation. Once and for all."
"There's no doubt you're capable of that," she said.
His anger faded away. Leaving a feeling of sorrow. Of no escape.
"Kain," he said, "studied the consequences of a catastrophe outside Copenhagen. And now we have an earthquake."
"For those who pray," she said, "the number of remarkable coincidences increases."
It took him a long time to turn his head. When the feat was accomplished her chair was empty. She was gone. Had she even been there at all?
* * *
The African pushed him through the white corridors.
"I signed a contract with her," he said. "Agreed to risk my career. To try to stop those who were after KlaraMaria. To support all of you. If she knew I would come, why all the stipulations?"
They rode down on the elevator. She did not reply until they reached the bottom and were out.
"Mother Maria," she said, "has often said that it's not good for people to receive the mystery of religion too easily. They can't value it then. Especially bankers."
"Bankers?"
"When we saw you on television, we laughed a lot. Mother Maria too. Afterward she said: 'What we'll find out when the time comes is whether he is fundamentally a clown. Or a banker with special talents.'"
He prayed, "May SheAlmighty let me live long enough to make a voodoo doll and stick the Blue Lady full of pins." Then he realized what he was doing. He leaned into the pain of his anger; half of all anger is directed inward at oneself.
The movement had stopped; the wheelchair stood still.
A flat hand was placed against the back of his neck. Through the touch he felt the warmth, and was filled with gratitude. He could hear that this was the closest the African would ever come to apologizing. And it was almost enough.
They stopped in front of a door, it opened, and she pushed him out into the little park.
2
The Blue Lady was sitting on a stone bench, with his violin case under her arm. She stood up and took over the wheelchair. The African left, and the abbess began pushing him slowly along the path by the lake.
The spring light and sounds went into his blood like an unruly wine, like the first glass of a fully matured vintage Krug. The Creator Herself breathes life into great champagnes the moment they fill your mouth, and for years afterward this life returns to your memory, little by little, involuntarily and shockingly, like the aftereffects of a magnificent hallucinogen.
A mild wind rustled what would soon become birch leaves; it played The Rite of Spring, yet somewhere within creation's springtime music he heard winter. Somewhere in the champagne taste Angostura bitters lay waiting.
"Two men from the immigration police have come to get you," said the abbess.
She placed the violin case in his lap.
"In great spiritual traditions," she said, "the teacher cannot encourage the student to ask questions. Not even in pressured situations. Not even if one has reached the very last opportunity to ever ask."
Her voice was serious. But deep, deep inside he thought he caught a hint of teasing. He felt actual physical discomfort at this evidence of her lack of refinement.
"It's clear enough why," she said. "The teacher can't create openness in a student. No person can open another person. All we can do is wait
. And then work with the openness when it occurs. Isn't that the clown's method as well?"
She stopped speaking. But he could still hear her compassion. It was far-reaching. It extended across Bagsværd and adjacent communities. It also included the teasing--he could suddenly hear that. And it included some rustic coarseness.
She spoke directly into his thoughts.
"Several of the world's religions have gone too far in trying to separate good and evil. Christianity as well. Not that we shouldn't make distinctions. But if the separation becomes too strong, it becomes inhuman. I always liked Leibniz a great deal. In the Théodicée he says that God is like a kitchen maid. When she has baked a loaf of bread, she has done her best. And that includes everything. The burned part of the crust too. Evil must also be from God somehow. Otherwise we couldn't be here. As human beings. With our failings. I've always felt that Leibniz was a great staretz. We just haven't canonized him yet. If he'd been available, he would have been a man for me."
Her words gave Kasper a jolt. He could have fallen out of his wheelchair. Impertinence is indispensable. But clowns have a patent on it. It doesn't belong within the Church. The Church should maintain the concert pitch. And then the rest of us can take care of the irregular intervals.
The wheelchair stopped by a bench and she seated herself.
"A disposable body," she said. "That's what Mother Rabia called our physical form. It's inseparable from sexuality. No person who still has a physical form is permanently asexual. I couldn't have gone without men. Still can't. And will never be able to."
She laughed happily, like a little girl. Kasper sensed champagne on his tongue. Lie heard a new sound. It was a deeper level of trust The sound came from his own system.
"I have a question," he said.
* * *
He had opened the violin case and lifted out the instrument. "It's about the 'Chaconne,'" he said.
He tuned the violin. Then he took a running start, and leaped. Into the music. Meanwhile he kept talking. Half spoke, half sang. Following the music. As if the words were a text to the chorales Bach had embedded in the musical sequence.
"The 'Chaconne' is divided into three sections," he said. "It's a triptych, like an altar painting. I always knew this music offered a door into heaven; it's an icon of sounds. That was clear to me from the first time I heard it. I also always knew that it was about death. From the first time I heard it, when I was fourteen, just after my mother died."
The music demanded all his strength; there isn't a single measure in the "Chaconne" where the heading could not be "man or woman struggles with a violin." Still, he felt the woman's concentration. It was wide-ranging. It drew in the lake and the woods and the sky, and dissolved them in attentiveness. The surroundings faded away; all that remained were him and her and the violin and Bach.
"She was the queen of the slack line," he said. "Slack line is the most technically difficult discipline in the circus. It was the seventies, safety nets were not yet required, and once in a while she performed without them."
His fingers moved more quickly.
"D-minor," he said. "It's about death. Bach had lost Maria Barbara and two of his children. He loved them and her. The theme is a death theme. Listen to the inevitability, the fixedness of fate; we will all die. And try to hear how here in the first section he shifts the register, uses quadruple stopping to create the illusion of several violins in dialogue with one another. They become the many voices that are within each person, in all of us. Some of the voices will accept death, others will not. And now begins the long, whirling arpeggio passage; movement over three or more strings increases the sense of accumulating energy. Can you hear it? One would swear there were at least three violins."
He saw only her eyes. Her tone had become colorless. Her compassion flowed around him on all sides; he was in an alembic, in a concert space of complete understanding and acceptance.
"I saw her from the horseback riders' gangway. She performed without a net maybe twice a year. My father hadn't seen any of those performances. If she wanted the safety net removed, he left. But I had always watched those performances. I had always understood her. It's hard to explain in words. But on those evenings she had a very special tone. It was completely calm. If you asked me why she did it, I'd have to say she performed without a net for two reasons. One was her love for the circus and for the spectators. The circus has always been close to death. There's very little deception in the circus. Very few pieces of scenery. No sloping boards to make the leaps artificially high. No stuntmen, no stand-ins. The circus is an extreme form of scenic honesty, and that honesty was crucial for her. In a way, the circus was an act of love for her."
The music's almost plaintive insistence intensified beneath his fingers.
"The other reason had to do with her deepest longing. She never talked about it. But I could hear it. Could hear the constant tone in her, the inner pedal tone, if you know what I mean. One can hear it in some of the great musicians. Some of the great comedians. Mountain climbers. 1 could hear it in Tati. In Messner. In your crazy driver. It's the longing for answers to the great questions. The longing for the Divine. Under the makeup. Under the totally artificial makeup. A genuine longing. And for those of us who feel it, it's the finest balance. Between heaven and earth. And that evening, when my mother was halfway between the masts, more than thirty feet aboveground, her sound shifted. And I heard something I hadn't heard before."
He neared the end of the first section, the number of simulated voices at a maximum; he had never fully understood how Bach did it--sometimes he thought perhaps there was not just one "Chaconne," perhaps there was a flowing tonal virtuality that kept multiplying and would never end. Perhaps people are like that--perhaps each of us is not just one person but an endless series of unique constellations in the present, or maybe that gets too complicated? That's the question great improvisers ask: Can we find our way back to the theme and the keynote?
"The longing for the Divine," he said, "for that which can never be completely contained in physical form, had gotten stronger in her. During the previous months. I could hear that. It was a small shift. But crucial. Normally I could always hear the part of her that continually listened for me. For my father. For the rehearsals and cleaning and shopping and food preparation and everyday reality. But at that moment, the volume for that part of her got turned down. And the volume was turned up on something else. I knew it before it happened. That she had forgotten everything else. And remembered only
God. I looked into her eyes. They were distant. But completely happy. And then she fell."
The theme returned, indicating the end of the first section; in the score there is no pause, but Kasper took a break.
"I went over to her. Everyone else was paralyzed; I was the only one who moved. I could hear her sound. Her body was dead. But her sound was alive. It wasn't unhappy. It was elated. This wasn't a mishap. Not from a higher point of view. From a higher point of view she had simply chosen a particular door. In a way, the best door to be found."
He met the Blue Lady's gaze. Her frequency was the same as his. He did not know what suffering life had brought her. But he felt that she knew his pain. And much more.
"It wasn't so easy for my father and me," he said.
The bow found the strings.
"The second section is in a major key. Compassionate. Deep sorrow. It was balm for my soul. Bach had suffered a loss, just like me; I could hear that. And he found a way through that loss. I played the piece again and again. Just listen: The consolation becomes almost triumphant. He makes the violin sound like trumpets. Here, beginning with measure one sixty-five, where he introduces a two-beat bar, he intensifies the fanfare effect by playing the D-string with the third finger while at the same time playing the open A-string. This reinforces the A-string overtones. Listen--it continues to measure one seventy-seven. Here the calm, deep joy begins. The rich use of musical suspension gives the feeling of great longing. He has made hi
s peace with death. You'd think that would be enough. But it isn't enough. Something even greater is on the way. From measure two oh one the spaceship begins to lift off. The second section ends with arpeggio passages, as the first one did. And now listen to the beginning of the third section."
He played the broken chord.
"We're back in D-minor. The same chord that Brahms uses in the introductory theme of his first piano concerto. The 'Chaconne' radiates throughout all of classical music. We're approaching measure two twenty-nine, where it modulates into bariolage; Bach seesaws between the open A-string and changing notes on the D-string. The music mourns but, at the same time, is filled with vitality. Death from the first section reappears, but now in the light of the consolation and triumph and inner peace of the second section. This is music that surges through the ceiling. It's a way of living in which death is always present and yet there are great reserves of strength and energy and compassion. Just listen now, from measure two forty-one. The light of understanding shines through death itself. Bach doesn't only say that one can look at death with wide-open eyes. He does it himself; he does it in the music. What is the secret? That's my question."
"Forgiveness," she said. "The secret is forgiveness. Forgiveness isn't charged with emotion; it's a matter of sound common sense. It occurs when you realize that the other person could not have acted otherwise. And that you could not have acted differently either. Very few of us have a real choice in decisive situations. You've suffered a loss. For which you hold all women since then responsible. Including me."
She was silent. He would have liked to ask about more things. Where Maximillian was headed. Where his love for Stina originated. His love for KlaraMaria.
The questions had already been answered. He and the Blue Lady were standing inside the place where those answers were found. Or on the threshold. She had taken him there. He didn't know who was playing the music, but it was playing; someone or other was taking care of everything. Fie could see the woman in front of him, but she was quivering, as if she were part of the "Chaconne." He also heard KlaraMaria, Stina, Maximillian. And his mother. Because we are always entangled in a web of tones and feelings of the heart, and within that web it essentially makes no difference whether people are alive or dead.