The Elephant Keepers' Children

by Peter Høeg

  The good thing about the situation is that we have the initiative. Bellerad and the two baldies and the woman with the flaming sword are quite nonplussed. So Tilte and I have the chance to digest these first, bare impressions of the ship owner’s psychology.

  There are three things we notice. The first is that Bellerad is a man who resembles most others insofar as he starts to quiver inside when he hears that an award is being bestowed upon him, a medal he will be able to show Aunt Lalandia, Cousin Intrepid, and Uncle Umbrage.

  The second is that he is a man whose life has taught him that when a person bestows something upon another, it’s because the bestower is aware that everything will be returned to him twice over, and now the immediate question is what might be engraved upon the reverse side of this particular medal.

  The third piece of information Tilte and I tap directly from our bare impressions is that Bellerad is a man who has something to hide. Not your usual medium-sized secret of the kind all of us have lying around somewhere. Bellerad’s secret is big and angry. Tilte and I feel like we’re standing in front of an old male elephant excluded from the herd on account of bad behavior and now feigning repentance while he awaits a chance to strike back.

  “The medal will be awarded during the Grand Synod,” I say. “By His Majesty the King himself. And Her Royal Highness the Princess.”

  Tilte and I retreat toward the glass entrance door. Bellerad and his two henchmen are not the kind one cares to turn one’s back on. Hans opens the glass door for us, then the car door. He salutes, climbs behind the wheel, and pulls away into the flow of traffic.

  I venture to glance back over my shoulder. All four have spilled out onto the pavement, where they now stand gaping in our direction.

  We continue on past office buildings and more destinations for excursions of the Society for the Improvement of the Capital. Tilte points and we take a left. We are silent and pensive, and what we’re thinking about is that we hope Bellerad hasn’t discovered that Mother and Father have hacked their way into his private correspondence, because he doesn’t look like a man who would let that sort of thing pass. In fact, he looks rather like someone who would have a bazooka at the ready on his hat shelf for just such an occasion.

  We catch a glimpse of what might once have been a warehouse but now has been given a loving hand and two hundred million kroner to become a place most people see only from the outside and from a distance, unless they happen to have won the pools. The Mercedes descends into an underground car park and comes to a halt in front of an iron gate equipped with a push-button panel. Tilte enters a code from Katinka’s mobile and the gate opens into a basement of such caliber that the parking spaces could be rented out as hotel rooms if you put up a few partition walls and installed beds. We leave the car and ascend in a lift made of mirrors and tropical wood. It projects us upward like a bullet and stops as gently as if in the down of a seagull. We step out onto a landing decorated with orchids in bowls of marble. Tilte produces a key from one of them and we step into the two-room apartment she has borrowed from an acquaintance.

  It’s true that the place has two rooms. But what Tilte has neglected to tell us is that each of them measures a hundred square meters. And if one should still feel one’s style to be cramped, there’s a balcony outside running the entire length of the place and looking out onto the blue waters of the harbor.

  The furniture is of the kind you’d expect the designer to have signed personally and only yesterday, because everything is brand-new, and there aren’t even any pictures on the walls yet.

  At first I feel like asking Tilte who might own such a place, but a thought descends like a sudden blanket of cloud: what if Tilte has an admirer? If she has, then having an admirer with such impeccable taste might indicate this to be a serious matter indeed. It would mean that in a year’s time Tilte would be all engaged and married and gone from home. Which is to say that the only thing we’d need then would be for Basker to find some cute little bitch to run away with and I would be all on my own, Mother and Father gone, siblings well on their way, and all forlorn in the vacuum would be me, myself, and I, Peter Finø, solo.

  We all sit down in the designer chairs. But then Ashanti stands up ever so slowly and walks through the flat to the far end where the lounge becomes an open kitchen. Although she says nothing, I sense why she has removed herself, and it’s because she wants to allow the three of us to be alone, and it’s such a fine gesture that one can only feel warmth for her, even if she is on the verge of kidnapping one’s older brother.

  And yet I can’t help feeling a sadness inside. None of us says anything, and the feeling becomes all the more intense. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to call it grief, and the cause of it now begins to emerge. For some reason it becomes apparent that Tilte and Hans and I will not be together forever. Ashanti and Hans have sparked it off, but in a way it’s not only the fact that they’re now a couple. What I sense all of a sudden is that eventually we will arrive at the end of our days, whereupon one of us will be the first to die, to be followed inevitably by the others.

  At this point you might say so what, everyone knows they’re going to die, and this would indeed be true. But normally it’s something we know only in our minds. Knowing you’re going to die is never here and now, but something far away in the future, so distant you can hardly even see it, and for that reason alone it need never be taken seriously.

  But at this moment it suddenly becomes here and now.

  I know you’re familiar with that feeling, because it’s something all of us have experienced at some time. I don’t know where it comes from. But looking at Hans’s hand as it rests there on the back of the chair, his large, square hand, which is always tanned, I suddenly understand that a day will come when that hand will no longer be there to take hold of me and lift me up to see the world from above.

  I glance at Tilte. Her face is tanned, even though it’s still only April. It’s a thing she’s inherited from our mother. In Tilte’s face, age is fleeting. When you look at her you often find yourself unable to tell if she’s seven or sixteen or sixteen hundred years old, because her eyes seem always to look out across great spans of time. And besides that, there’s a kind of inquisitiveness about Tilte, she always wants to know everything there is to know about people, and there’s a kindness, too, and even if it’s pointed and sharp, it’s a kindness so immense that only Great-Grandma is ahead of her, and she’s had ninety-three years of practice.

  One day I shall look into these kind, venerable eyes for the last time, and this is what has become clear to me now. And my sadness is compounded, as though that time had already come.

  But then something happens that is so quiet and unobtrusive that no one would ever notice. And what happens is that I remain seated and refrain from removing myself from my grief and anxiety.

  Normally it cannot be endured. Knowing in your mind that you’re going to die can be bad enough in itself, but feeling it in your heart, feeling the reality of it, is a thing humans generally find themselves unable to cope with. I am no exception. I’m no braver than you. But when you’ve got a sister with whom you’ve been able to start investigating the path that leads to the door, and the two of you have been able to complement each other in thoroughgoing theological studies on the Internet and at the Finø Town Library, there comes a time when you can no longer stand to close your eyes and blot everything out, and for me that time would seem to have come now.

  What I do in a way is to give the feeling space. That means allowing images of death to come to the fore, and for some reason I see myself being the first to die. I see it vividly: I’m lying in a bed, saying goodbye to Hans and Tilte.

  I don’t know where such images come from, because when you’re fourteen it’s hard to see yourself dying of anything in particular, but perhaps my own death as I picture it is the result of accumulated injuries sustained at football practice. Playing at such a high level as the first team of Finø FC is not without its
drawbacks.

  Actually, this might not be true, because the injuries I’ve had have never been the kind you could present to the intensive care unit of the Finø Hospital and receive credit for, seeing as how I’ve always been able to float above the sliding tackles like a fairy would float above lilies of the valley, and the worst I’ve ever had is a slight hint of a pulled muscle. So where the image of my own decline comes from I have no idea, but nonetheless I see myself saying goodbye to Tilte and Hans, embracing them and thanking them for allowing me to have known them, and I look at Hans’s square hands one final time, and into Tilte’s kind eyes, and then I reach inside into the feeling of death itself.

  By doing so, it all becomes that much more real. Indeed, it feels almost as though it were happening now, in this luxury apartment facing Copenhagen’s harbor on a brand-new day of sunshine.

  I try to refrain from seeking solace in the thought of some miraculous reprieve. I refrain from seeking comfort in the thought that most likely a light will simply go out, or that Jesus will be waiting for me, or Buddha, or whomever else you might imagine stepping forth with a broad smile and an aspirin to say it won’t be anywhere near as bad as you think. I refrain from imagining anything at all. The only thing I can do is to feel the weight of the farewell none of us can ever avoid.

  At the very moment I sense that everything will be lost, and hence nothing is worth holding onto, something happens. It has happened before, and in a way it’s such a little thing, so innocuous as to be barely noticeable, which is why really you need someone to show it to you. Tilte showed it to me, and now I’m telling you. What happens is that a little gleam of happiness and freedom appears. Nothing else changes: you’re still sitting where you were when it came, and no one has come to your aid, no seraphim or angels or houris or holy virgins or heavenly support of any kind. You’re sitting there, and you see that you’re going to die, and sense how much you love those you will lose, and then it happens: for a very brief moment it’s as though time stops. Or rather: it doesn’t exist. As though Langelinie and Copenhagen and Sjælland are a room inside a shell, and for a very brief moment the shell disappears. That’s all that happens. The feeling of anxiety and incarceration is gone, and what you feel instead is freedom. You sense that there is a way of being present in the world that will never expire, which means that you are not afraid, because the feeling of freedom is something that will never go away. Hans and Tilte and this delicate footballing frame of mine will, of course, die. But there’s something else beyond, a thing for which there are no words, but of which one is a part and which never comes to an end, and that’s what the feeling is.

  I know that at this moment I am standing at the door. And to be exact, it’s not a door at all, because a door is in one place, but this is everywhere. It belongs to no religion, it does not say that you must believe or worship or stick to rules. It says only three things. The first is that you should reach inside your heart. The second is that for a moment you should be willing to accept it all, even the unreasonable detail of having to die. And the third is that you should remain standing quite still for just a second to watch the ball cross the goal line.

  This is what I experience now, in this two-room apartment on the fifth floor.

  And I can tell by looking at Tilte that something very similar is going on inside her, too. I’m more uncertain about Hans, because his faculties are rather curtailed at the moment and I’m not sure if he has room for revelation, because everything would seem to indicate that his beautiful singer has taken up all his available space.

  It takes a moment, and like I said it’s all very quiet and subdued, nothing to write home about, no flags or decorations. All there is is the realization that if you look straight into the feeling of having to die, you will find freedom and relief.

  It’s there, and then it’s gone. Ashanti is standing by the table. She places a sandwich in front of each of us.

  “Enjoy,” she says. “Or as we say at home in Haiti, Bon appétit.”

  45

  I’m sorry to say that the welfare system in Denmark is unevenly distributed and in certain areas completely absent. Wherever I happen to be, for instance, death by starvation is ever lurking.

  I don’t know why that should be, whether it has to do with my age or my level of training, or perhaps I simply carry an unknown parasite around with me in my colon. Whatever the reason, I’m forever hungry. That’s the way it’s always been. When I was a little boy, I would often imagine Jesus making me a sandwich, and with his natural talent for catering I could only look forward to the feasts he would almost certainly be able to conjure up for me.

  This is exactly the kind of sandwich Ashanti now puts in front of each of us. She must have been out shopping for the ingredients and spent some considerable time preparing them. A mood of solemnity descends upon the table.

  The bread is freshly leavened, and I must offer my apologies because I am compelled, in the midst of this meal, to note that the aroma is the same as I recall from Conny’s scalp. Moreover, the crust is as crisp as glass, the crumb resilient and elastic, and pocketed with air.

  Picking through the contents of one’s sandwich is normally considered to be bad manners, but in this case I just can’t stop myself. I lift the lid, the uppermost piece of bread, and gaze down upon all that is sacred to me. First, there are slices of butter cut with the thick edge of the cheese slicer. Then comes a spreading of mayonnaise with an aroma of garlic and lemon and a tropical spice she must have brought with her from the feverish jungles of Haiti. This is followed by small leaves of a variety of greens: purple, bitter, curly, and crisp, then chunks of North Sea tuna of the kind caught off Finø, lightly grilled and ever so slightly pink and fleshy inside. On top of the tuna are wafer-thin rings of red onion and a sprinkling of large capers, and blow me down if they haven’t been in pickle together with fish eggs that pop one by one inside your mouth, leaving you with the very taste of the Sea of Opportunity.

  Many a cook and sandwich maid would have stopped here, because the creation has at this point already topped ten centimeters in height, but our singing antelope has been holding back to put in the final flourish. On the underside of the uppermost piece of bread is once again a thick spreading of Caribbean mayonnaise, and into it Ashanti has mixed small pieces of olive and red and green peppers.

  It all has the kind of artistic touch that makes you bow your head in acknowledgment, because even if there are enough calories here to propel the Finø AllStars to the top of the Danish Superliga, they are presented with such delicacy that all five sandwiches look like they’re about to float out of the window and do a lap of honor with the seagulls over the harbor.

  Ashanti places a tall glass next to each of our plates, which she fills with sparkling mineral water from the Finø Brewery, and looks briefly into the eyes of the person whose glass she has just filled.

  I am the last to receive, and as she looks into my eyes she notices something of which I become aware only at that same moment: that I am the youngest. And though I have peered into the depths of existence and have lost my parents on two occasions and play for a selected team and have seen true love rise and set like the sun that shines on Finø, I am still only fourteen years old. And if there’s one thing you need in a situation such as this, it’s for a woman like Ashanti to understand and make you a sandwich that postpones death by starvation indefinitely, and to look upon you with what I will venture to call solicitude.

  Then she sits down beside us, and we have reached a point at which some of the great questions find an answer.

  46

  “I suppose you remember I gave Ashanti my number,” says Hans. “Before we went our separate ways.”

  Tilte and Basker and I stare emptily at him. We’re too polite to remind him of how she actually received his number.

  “She called me an hour later when I was in Klampenborg unhitching the horses. I went and picked her up straightaway. We’ve not been separated since.”

>   “He read his poems for me,” says Ashanti. “On the jetty at Skovshoved.”

  It is a testimony to Tilte’s self-control and mine that we remain collected. Following exposure to Hans’s poetry, many women would have dived into the sea to escape the threat of more. But not this one. It tells us something about the depth of feeling that exists between these two individuals, which is now unfolding before us.

  “She’s a priestess,” says Hans.

  His voice is thick, partly because of mayonnaise, partly with admiration.

  “The Yoruba religion. She grew up in Haiti but attends the university here. She’s going to be dancing at the conference …”

  “A sacred Santeria dance,” says Ashanti.

  “A dance in preparation for the journey from the body,” says Hans.

  Tilte and I look at Ashanti again. Just the way she eats would bring tears of joy to the eyes of Ifigenia Bruhn, proprietor of Ifigenia Bruhn’s Dancing School. And though we have yet to see her dance, we have seen her walk, most recently through the room in which we are seated, and her gait is such that no one would ever be surprised if she made a little detour up the walls and across the ceiling. So personally I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to leave my body, if only hers were mine. But then again, all of us are searching for the door in our own way, and one shouldn’t meddle too much in the affairs of others.

  “Where’s the car from?” Tilte asks.

  “I borrowed it,” says Hans. “From my employer. He’s away and won’t be missing it. And what he doesn’t know will never hurt him.”

  Tilte and I aren’t sure. Hans has probably heard about infringements of the law, but little would seem to indicate that he believes them to exist. No one from Finø has ever known him even to cross the street against a light, and not only because Finø has no traffic lights or pedestrian crossings. And now he’s stolen a Mercedes.