by Peter Høeg
“Do you have any idea how many hours of surgery there are here? Eighteen. Three operations, three implants in each. They’ll last ten years, fifteen at most. And they’re as sore as hell. No one’s allowed to touch, not even Andrik. I cried my eyes out every time I fed the twins. That’s how much they hurt. Have you been to a brothel before?”
I shake my head.
She’s now on her feet. Something’s going on inside her. I can’t work it out, but we’re touching on something, approaching it. I just don’t know what it is.
“Listen to me. The deal is this: you can have everything. You can stick it in wherever you want. Blow job, hand job. You can bathe in ethereal oils, or have your backside spanked. But all of it’s with a condom on. No kissing. And our hearts are outside in the cloakroom. No feelings involved. I have this ritual every time I get myself ready. I’ve a box in the dressing room with a photo of the twins in it. I pretend to take my heart out and put it inside the box. Do you understand me? It works. But three months a year I hate men.”
“I’ve got a sister,” I tell her.
“I don’t do girls.”
“Neither does she. But she’s got some interesting viewpoints on anger. Building on in-depth studies of the spiritual classics. She can help you.”
“No one can do a thing. The world’s the way it is.”
On that point I believe she’s wrong. The thought alone of what a person like Tilte could do with a place like Abakosh and a woman such as Pallas Athene is enough to make me dizzy. But I say nothing. There’s a time for everything, as the Old Testament says, and product development of such nature will have to wait.
She pulls up a wicker chair and sits down close to me. Now we’re getting there.
“I’ll do up to four men at once. Men often come together. Especially before something important. It may be four actors before a premiere. Politicians in the middle of some major negotiation. Businessmen about to sign some big contract. That password you’ve got. Yesterday, four people came in with that password. Three men and a woman. It’s personal. Assigned to one person only. The Dane. All I know is his name’s Henrik. The other three are foreigners, though they speak the language. Henrik’s a regular. Always on his own. But yesterday he had three others with him.”
She lights up another cigarette.
“I had a funny feeling. Something wasn’t quite right. So afterward I sat and thought about it, trying to figure out what it was. And do you know what? It was fear. They scared me. I’ve been in the business fifteen years. But this was the first time. Do you know why I’m telling you this?”
“Anger, partly,” I say.
“True.”
Her sense of unease makes her rise from her chair again.
“I’m thirty years old. I’ve three years left at the most. We’ve got our savings, of course, and the holiday cottage, and the apartment here, and a studio outside Barcelona. But I’ve given this all I’ve got. Yesterday was no exception. The one called Henrik rang me up, wanting me to go to them. I said no. I had this feeling about it. I did myself up, got into the part. Henrik always wants me to play his mother. Scold him, feed him, change his nappy. And the two others wanted the same. All three wanted to sit in high chairs and be fed. And they each had their own religion. Never done that before. I had to change clothes eight times in two hours. And read from the holy scriptures while they played with their food. It was like the chimps’ tea party at the zoo. And then they wanted a pillow fight. With bare backsides and baby food all over the place. The woman wanted Andrik to be her father and give her a ride. But when Henrik wanted to take a dump on the floor, I put my foot down. We’ve all got our limits, wouldn’t you say? Would you have allowed it?”
“Probably not,” I say.
“So then they have this last wish. They want me to tell them, one at a time, that Mummy’s proud of you, Mummy’s very proud of what you’re doing. I ask them for more details, so it’ll be easier for me to play the role. But they close up on me. All they want is for me to pat them on the head and tell them Mummy’s proud as punch and wishes them good luck. And then it’s all over, and when they leave they’re quiet and won’t even say goodbye, and that’s when I begin to sense something. I sense they’re up to no good, and whatever it is it’s big time and sinister. And in some way they’ve used me and Andrik so as to pluck up the courage. So I owe it to you to help. This is the first time in fifteen years I’ve told someone else about a client. You never do that, it’s the most important rule there is in this business. But now I’ve done it. For the first time. Will you accept my help?”
“If it’s all right with you, I’ll jump at the offer.”
She gives me an expectant look.
“Can we leave the twins with Andrik for an hour or so?” I ask.
She straightens up. “He’s a wonderful father!”
“There’s someone we need to meet,” I say. “Someone who needs to hear all this.”
56
One might perhaps have wished for a more inconspicuous mode of transport than the red Jaguar. Nevertheless, this is what takes us, Pallas Athene and me, from Toldbodgade to Kongens Nytorv.
We arrive without Pallas Athene having smashed in the faces of innocent male motorists, a fact for which I am grateful. Now I ask her to park as close behind the red double-decker bus as possible, and this she does in her own inimitable fashion, there being a free space reserved for the handicapped, and this is where she parks, producing from the glove compartment a blue badge bearing the wheelchair symbol, which she places on the dashboard with a comment about many of her customers being in the medical profession.
I borrow her mobile and instruct her to press the horn once when I give the sign. Then I dial Albert Winehappy’s number.
The mood is devout and solemn. For the first time, I am about to establish contact with one of the individuals who is most likely behind the scheme that has turned me and Tilte and Basker gray haired and added ten years to our age in just a couple of days.
“Yes?”
If like me you have a mother who’s in love with Schubert, or an aunt or a female cousin, then you might have heard some of the Goethe-Lieder performed by Fischer-Dieskau. And if you’ve heard these recordings, then you’ll have a good idea of what the voice at the other end of the phone sounds like.
It’s a voice that knows things it has no intention of revealing. Perhaps the man to whom it belongs killed twelve people in a clan dispute one moonlit night. Perhaps he plundered the grave of a pharaoh. Or perhaps he was the lover of three government ministers all at once without any of them ever finding out about the others, and now it’s over.
Whatever his secret, one thing is certain: this is the voice of an elephant keeper. And beneath the polished tone, one hears the elephant snort.
“Does the name Finø mean anything to you?” I ask.
At first is silence.
“Go on,” he says.
“I do hope it does. Because the island of that name is home to three neglected children who have lost a great deal indeed. And who believe that you ought to help them get some of it back.”
“Who the bleeding hell …?” he begins.
I give Pallas Athene a sign and she sounds the horn. The Jaguar roars. Faintly, yet distinctly, I hear it in the receiver, too.
Then I hang up.
“See that bench over there?” I say to Pallas Athene. “By the front end of the bus? Sit down there, light up a cigarette, lean back, and watch what happens.”
I run across the square, slowing down to a trot as I reach the entrance of the Hotel d’Angleterre, slow enough as not to attract attention. I pass through reception and peer into the restaurant.
Inside the door, gateaux and cakes are housed in their own glass tower, one per story. I glance around. The waiters have their backs turned. I swipe a whole layer cake.
Layer cake may be a poor description, because in actual fact it consists of one layer only, albeit fifteen centimeters thick, topped with whipp
ed cream and crumbled nougat and raspberries, and with a crisp base that almost certainly would provide anyone with an unforgettable confectionery experience.
At home in the rectory we were taught to whip cream by hand with a whisk. Should you come from a more unfortunate home in which cream was whipped by mechanical means, perhaps even with the aid of an electric appliance, all may not yet be lost.
An electric mixer infuses air all too quickly into the cream, whereby the bubbles take up too much space and the skimmed milk separates prematurely from the fat. Cream whipped by hand with a whisk takes on a completely different texture altogether.
This is a fact known to all in the kitchens of the Hotel d’Angleterre. The cake is firm and unperturbed by my ascent of the stairs, even though I take four steps at a time. So when I get to the bridal suite and knock on the door and step inside, it’s only me who’s out of breath and whose cheeks are flushed; the cake looks exactly like the confectioner just sent it off with a kiss.
Thorkild Thorlacius, Anaflabia, Thorlacius’s wife, Vera the Secretary, and Alexander Flounderblood have been taking their time. They’ve cut the chains of their handcuffs, and the pieces are on the floor together with the bolt cutter, the hacksaw, and the metal files. What they haven’t been able to remove are the actual cuffs around their wrists. So they have partaken of brunch with these still on, and they’re only just finishing up now.
I approach the table and deliver the cake in a gentle arc into the face of Alexander Flounderblood.
“In time,” I say, “you will all understand that this is for your own good.”
When you see people in films having custard pies pressed into their faces, the pies, I’m sorry to say, are invariably dummies or cheap tarts of dubious quality. But a high-class layer cake such as the present one produces a completely different visual effect altogether. In films, the victims will often be able to remove most of the custard pie with just a couple of swipes of the hand. But the eyes of Alexander Flounderblood have only just become visible after perhaps twenty seconds or more of vigorous and wholehearted swiping.
And with that, his line of vision is now once more unhindered, whereby all his attention and his plans for the immediate future shift from the cake to me.
Thorkild Thorlacius and Anaflabia, too, rise from their chairs. But Alexander Flounderblood’s movements are in a class of their own. He projects himself upward onto his feet as fast as a pinball machine.
I’ve a clear, albeit tiny, head start. So when I unexpectedly pass Max on my way down the stairs, I’ve no time to stop. All I register is him gaping at me, and then he’s far behind in my wake.
I’m out of the building and Alexander’s after me. I’ve seen him out jogging with Baroness, but am nonetheless surprised to receive his company at such close quarters, so close I would venture that the base of the layer cake must have involved some kind of walnut meringue.
We cross the street in heavy traffic. Brakes are applied, horns blare. I’m nearly at the red bus now and cast a glance over my shoulder. Alexander’s only a few strides behind. Fifty meters behind him, Thorkild Thorlacius and Anaflabia, too, have negotiated the traffic and are picking up speed.
I glance through the windscreen of the bus. Lars is still in the driver’s seat. And so, for that matter, is Katinka, who appears now to have straddled him.
Some might consider this not to be the done thing in public. But then, isn’t it exactly the kind of sight most tourists would come flocking to see? And is it not love’s very nature, if I remember correctly from when love was still a part of my own life? Sometimes it builds a room around the lovers, inside which they are no longer aware of anyone else existing in the world but themselves.
Regrettably, I must now break down the walls of that room. I slap my palms hard against the windscreen, then duck down between the front wheels and slip beneath the bus.
From this point on I can see only as much as can be viewed from underneath a bus. But even this is encouraging. I see Alexander halt, and from the expression on his face it would seem that he has caught sight of Lars and Katinka and that they have caught sight of him and recognized him through the remains of the cake. Alexander turns on his heel, as indeed do Thorkild Thorlacius and Anaflabia somewhat farther away.
It is testimony to the mental agility of these three individuals that in a split second they can switch their attention from a heartfelt desire to apprehend and mistreat me to an entirely different one involving them making themselves scarce. In the manner of the true cons they are rapidly becoming, they split up and leg it in different directions, thereby forcing their pursuers to divide themselves. The last I see is the three of them at full pelt on their way over Kongens Nytorv, dispersing to various corners of the globe with Lars and Katinka hot on their heels.
I bow to Pallas Athene.
“All clear,” I say.
Her gaze follows the absconding trio and their pursuers.
“I’ve only known you for just over two hours,” she says. “But I must say that if you keep this up you’re going make yourself a lot of enemies.”
“At least I’ve no record of violence,” I tell her. “Unlike some.”
“You’re only twenty-one,” she says. “Wait till you get to my age.”
57
We step inside the bus. The driver’s area is separated from the rest of the bus by a partition wall, and when we open the door, it becomes clear that using this vehicle for a sightseeing business would be a total nonstarter, because all the windows are blacked out and all the seats have been removed to make room for elecronic equipment comprising maybe fifty monitors, in front of which sit four people equipped with headphones and microphones, all four so absorbed in their work that not one of them turns to look up as we pass.
In the middle of this space, a small winding staircase leads us upward into an almost identical room, once again containing four dedicated individuals immersed in whatever it is they’re doing. This space is only half as big, constrained as it is by another partition wall with a wide door in it, which I now proceed to open without knocking.
The room we enter amply makes up for the blackout of the rest of the bus, because here there are windows from floor to ceiling, as well as in the roof. The glass must be polarized and tinted in a special way, because none of this is visible from the outside, though inside it is like a very comfortable aquarium.
The man seated comfortably here is Albert Winehappy. I know this immediately, and Anaflabia hit the nail on the head: the man is a cardinal, maybe even a pope, because cardinals presumably have someone higher ranking above them, but the man who reclines here in his chair does so in such a way as to suggest that he could lift off without ever banging his head against another living soul, if you understand what I mean.
The only problem he would encounter about lifting off would be of a quite different nature altogether, to do with the fact that he’s as fat as a prize sow at the Finø Agricultural Fair, and there’s absolutely no reason to believe that his superfluous weight has been an easy thing to achieve. Rather, it has obviously involved some considerable work, work that he is just as obviously willing to perform, because in front of him is the biggest packed lunch I’ve ever seen in my life, and as he considers us, he unwraps it to reveal at least twenty slices of rye bread, all generously heaped with delicacies.
He has cottoned on to my gaze.
“One hundred and sixty kilos,” he says. “I’m aiming for one hundred and eighty.”
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” I tell him.
“Some of it’s comfort eating,” he says. “On account of having run into your family.”
A more impolite individual would say that in that case he must have run into us generations ago, but I was brought up in a rectory.
I place the flash drive containing the footage from the old chapel in front of him and write down the registration number of the black van on a pad.
“My sister, Tilte, has been kidnapped,” I tell him.
“An hour ago, in a van with that registration. That’s the first thing. The second is that there are four people, three men and a woman, intending to blow up the exhibition that’s going on alongside the Grand Synod. On that flash drive are image and sound files that show them in dim light for a minute and a half.”
He must have pressed a button, because now a woman enters. She’s thirty years younger than him but in full possession of the aura of power needed to succeed him as pope. She picks up my notes and the flash drive, and then leaves.
Pallas Athene and I have both taken a seat. Albert Winehappy considers us for a moment. Perhaps he abandons himself to the pleasure of the sight before him. Perhaps he is merely thinking. My guess is the latter.
“If you’ll allow me to be frank,” I say, “and speak freely to a civil servant of high rank and advanced years. We’ve never met before. But it seems to me that you have been personally responsible for warrants put out for the arrest of my parents and my older brother, and for my sister and me being taken into custody and banged up in a rehab center for substance abusers. Moreover, it seems that you gave the go-ahead for us to be forcibly removed from our home by the authorities, that it is your doing that our same childhood home has been taken apart and gone over with a fine-tooth comb, and that a bishop, a neural scientist, and a representative of the Ministry of Education have been let loose upon us. Not to mention your issuing the order that our dog, Basker, be put down.”
Albert Winehappy wears a beard, and this is an insightful move on his part, because his face would otherwise be devoid of contrast, rather in the manner of a full moon. Now he strokes that beard pensively. I sense his intelligence. It’s as though just behind his frontal lobes is a buzzing hive of bees.
The female successor returns.
“The vehicle was stolen this morning,” she says. “From a carport in Glostrup. The owner’s away. We got hold of him on his mobile. It wouldn’t have been missed for another week. We’ve had a look at the footage. It’ll take awhile to go through it all. But we’ve got a positive ID on the four floaters.”