The Quiet Girl (6 page)

"But who, deep inside," she said, "is hatching a plan. About how to take over the whole neighborhood."

A week later he'd had the drawer made. He hadn't said anything. She arrived, the cabinet was attached to a wall in the trailer, and the drawer was pulled out slightly. Her hands glided over the wood, pulled out the drawer, pushed it in, without a word. He had taken its measurements from the drawers in her apartment. It exactly fit a four-centimeter-scale map.

The next time she brought a briefcase with her. Without saying anything she left a small stack of maps, copy paper, an etui containing a bow compass. The things had been there ever since.

One of the maps was of Copenhagen Harbor, 1:25,000. Now he took the compass, and recalled the sound picture from the telephone conversation.

Foremost were the Marble Church bells, electrically amplified, but muted so as not to awaken Amalienborg Palace. In open surroundings the sound pressure level decreases six decibels each time the distance to the sound maker doubles. With the compass he measured two and a half miles according to the scale at the bottom of the map. Using the church as the center, he drew a circle with this distance as the radius.

Grundtvig Church lay far back in the sound picture, but it was very clear. The huge vibrating bell seemed to be playing, quite alone, "Christmas Bells Are Ringing." It was also in D; the composer had imitated the sound of the church bell. So it was likely that the telephone had been located high up. Above the sixty-five feet that would have made it higher than the roofs of Nørrebro and Østerbro. He estimated the distance at three miles. He heard the Church of Our Savior chimes. Farther out in the sound picture were the City Hall chimes; he must have caught their quarter-hour tolling. They were made of iron ore instead of bronze, and had a hard clang. The frequency wasn't as pure as that of the church bells. Their distance from the telephone was three miles. Using Grundtvig Church as the center, he drew a new circle with this radius. The two circles shared a common area that included all of outer Østerbro.

He listened again. He identified the English Church and St. Jacob's Church; their interference created a corona of suggested major keys from A to D. He drew two additional circles.

They intersected the two original circles fifty-five yards offshore. North of the entrance to Copenhagen Harbor. Beyond the tip of the peninsula, at a depth of thirty-nine feet. He hadn't heard correctly.

* * *

He drank from the glass. In the midst of failure all the sounds he heard seemed very near. The sounds of April were unlike any others. No leaves on the trees. No vegetation to dampen reflection and diffusion. He heard the last rush-hour traffic from Glostrup. The distant drone from Ring Road 4. The birds in the bogs. Voices of the seamstresses. Cheered by the sunset. By closing time. Yet, not completely present. A part of their systems was already on the way home. Most of them had children. Women's voices developed a certain gravity when they had children. An ostinato.

The first day when the sun was warm enough to sit outside for fifteen minutes he had crossed the courtyard during the lunch break. He had heard the women's voices from far away. Not the words, but the tone; they were talking about children. They had called to him, and he had seated himself on a bench with them. Their eyes were affectionate and teasing, the kind of risk-free flirting that comes from knowing you have a dependable husband at home. Normally he loved it like a warm bath. One of them had asked: "Why don't you have children?"

He had noticed her before.

"I haven't been able to find a woman."

They smiled, he smiled. They didn't understand that it was true. "That's one reason," he said. "The other is that in a little while we're gone, in a little while the children are old. Just imagine it-- they're eighty years old, their spouses are dead, there are no witnesses to the first thirty years of their lives, and then they're gone. That's the other reason."

They edged away from him. The woman who had asked the question before spoke again.

"I thought you were a clown."

He rose to his feet.

"I'm a musician," he said. "I have a deal with SheAlmighty. To play all the notes. Including the black ones."

After that the latent eroticism had cooled. Some of it had heated up again. But things had never been completely the same.

He placed a book on top of the glass. To reduce evaporation. The book was Jung's memoirs. Jung had written that people seek their spirituality in alcohol. Jung must have known what he was talking about. He must have known how it felt to sit across from two cases of Krug Magnum and be unable to stop after the first case. Alcohol is a violin; it's impossible to leave it alone. He lifted the book and emptied the glass.

He changed places. So he would be sitting across from the sofa. Across from where KlaraMaria had sat. The first time he saw her.
 
 

10

It had been exactly one year ago.

He had returned from a performance a little later than usual; it was April, midnight. The trailer stood on a plot of land near the coastal community of Vedbæk. He had owned the property for twenty years without applying for a building permit. Its twelve thousand square yards of quack grass stretched down to the beach, encircled by fir trees.

The trailer stood in the middle of the grass; he drove over to it, parked, opened the door, and listened.

Nature always plays one or more musical themes, or that might just be imagination. That night it was the
Ricercare
from Ein Musikalisches Offer, orchestrated by Anton Webern with text by Tagore: "Not hammer blows, but the dance of the waves sings small stones into perfection."

It had been years since Stina had disappeared. She hadn't taken the meaning of life with her--that had begun to wander away of its own accord much earlier. But she had slowed down the process.

From the trailer came a sound that shouldn't have been there. He ducked out of the car. One can't have twenty years of gentle ascent in show business without becoming a victim of projections.

He reached the door on all fours. He felt under the trailer for the key; it was gone.

Someone who had progressed further in his development would have left. Or would have pressed a couple of buttons beside the door. Artist's insurance had given him a direct line to the security services of both Falck and Securitas. But we are no farther than where we are. From under the steps he fished out a thirty-inch pipe from the good old days when they were still made of lead.

He entered the doorway silently. He could hear one person, a resting pulse between eighty and ninety, a circus dwarf.

"Come in."

It was a child, a girl. He didn't know how she had been able to hear him. He walked in.

She was perhaps eight or nine years old. She hadn't turned on the lights, but the shutters were open; she sat in moonlight, on the sofa, with her legs crossed. Like a little Buddha.

He stood there and listened. In the history of crime there have been examples of young children working with grown men who had very poor ethics. He didn't hear anything. He sat down across from her.

"How did you find the key?"

"I guessed."

It lay on the table in front of her. He had found such a good crack to hide it in that sometimes he couldn't find it himself. There was no chance that she could have guessed where it was hidden.

"How long have you been here?"

"Not very long."

"How did you get here?"

"By bus and train."

He nodded.

"Of course," he said. "Around midnight a big city lies wide open. For a little eight-year-old girl."

"Nine," she said. "And they're free. The bus and train. When you're under twelve."

Something was wrong with her system. Her intensity didn't match her age.

Not that other children didn't have energy. He had lived in the midst of the other artists' children for thirty-five years. Children woke up at six-thirty in the morning and shifted directly into fourth gear. Fourteen hours later they rushed straight into sleep at more than a hundred miles an hour without decelerating. If one could attach electrodes and draw energy directly from children, one could make a fortune.

But the systems of those children had been unfocused; it had been a flea circus. The girl in front of him was utterly composed. "I've seen you in the circus. I could see that it would be good for you to talk with me."

He didn't believe his own ears. She spoke like a queen. Without taking his eyes off her, he found the drawer of opening-night gifts with his right hand. He opened it, and put a two-pound box of Neuhaus chocolates on the table.

"Have a child-molester candy," he said. "Why would it be good for me,'

"You have a sick heart."

She was deadly serious.

She opened the candies. Closed her eyes while the chocolate melted in her mouth.

"Maybe you're a doctor?" he said. "What's wrong with my heart?"

"You have to find her, the woman. Who left you. And that's just the beginning."

There were no letters. No pictures she could have seen. Not five people who would remember anything. And none of them would have told it to a child.

"Where are your parents?"

"I don't have any."

Her voice was as unconcerned as a loudspeaker announcement.

"Where do you live?"

"I promised not to tell."

"Who did you promise?"

She shook her head.

"Don't push me," she said. "I'm only nine years old."

Just a fraction of his attention was on her words. He tried to determine her musical key. It wasn't constant. Something happened to it whenever she wasn't speaking. He didn't know what it was. But it was something he had never heard before.

"Where did you get my address?"

She shook her head. He noticed an anxiety in himself that he didn't understand. He let his hearing become unfocused, spread it out, scanned the surroundings.

He heard Strand Road. The waves and the gravel at the edge of the water. The wind in the fir trees. In the withered grass. Nothing else. It was just the two of them.

"Play for me," she said.

He sat down at the piano. She followed him. Took the chocolates along. She curled up in the easy chair and pulled a blanket over her.

He played the
Ricercare
, the entire piece, perhaps nine minutes.

She had stopped chewing. She sucked in the tones just as fast as they left the piano.

When he had finished she waited for a long time, longer than a concert audience. Longer than people usually do.

"Did you compose that?"

"Bach."

"Is he in the circus too?"

"He's dead."

She considered that. Took another piece of chocolate.

"Why don't you have any children?"

She reached out one hand and turned on a lightbulb. It was placed behind a piece of glass with a matte finish. On the glass plate was a child's drawing. Fastened with metal clamps. For years he had received hundreds of drawings each month. He had installed a place to hang them, and each week had changed the drawing. Sometimes more often.

"I haven't been able to find a woman who wanted to be a mother."

She looked at him. It was the most aggressive gaze he had met in any child. Perhaps in any human being.

"You're lying. And to a small child at that."

He felt his anxiety increase.

"I could move in," she said.

"This is all the space I have. And I don't have much money at the moment."

"I don't eat very much."

He had sat across from all kinds of children. Juvenile offenders, fifteen-year-old desperadoes who had double-edged daggers strapped to their legs under camouflage trousers and suspended sentences for violent crimes against innocent people. That hadn't been a problem. He'd had them on a short leash the whole time. This was something different. He started to perspire.

One moment her face was pure and austere as an angel's. Then it broke into a demonic smile.

"I'm testing you," she said. "I'm not going to move in. You wouldn't be able to take care of a child. It's not true either that I don't eat. I eat like a horse. The matron calls me 'The Tapeworm.'"

She had risen from the chair.

"You can drive me home now."

* * *

She didn't talk on the way, except to give directions about where to go. She was as concise as a rally navigator; from Strand Road they turned inland via Skodsborg Road.

The road ran along the border between the city and the woods, between the highway and deserted stretches, between row houses and country estates. They drove across Frederiksdal.

"Turn right," she said.

They drove down along the lake. After half a mile she signaled him to stop.

It was a stretch without any houses.

They sat silently beside each other. The girl stared up into the night sky.

"I'd like to be an astronaut," she said. "And a pilot. What did you want to be? When you were little?"

"A clown."

She looked at him.

"That's what you became. That's important. That a person becomes what they most want to be."

Somewhere deep in the night sky a dot of light moved. Perhaps it was a shooting star, perhaps a spacecraft, perhaps an airplane.

"I'll drive you all the way home," he said.

She got out of the car, he opened his door. When he got to the other side, she was gone.

He felt with his hearing. Behind him were rows of small houses leading toward Bagsværd, behind them the night traffic on the main highways. To his right, the wind in Lyngby Radio's installations. From the lake, the sound of the last ice that had broken up and was tinkling at the shore, like ice cubes in a glass. Ahead of him, dogs had awakened one another somewhere around the regatta pavilion. He heard the rushes rustling. The night creatures. The wind in the trees in Slotspark. In just one place, a voice in a garden. An otter fishing near the canal connection to Lyngby Lake.

But no sound of the girl. She was gone.

A powerful motor started up from somewhere just inside the forest nursery. He started to run. Although tragically out of condition, he had it in him to do one hundred meters in less than thirteen seconds. He made it up the steep slope just as the car drove by. A woman sat at the wheel. Perhaps someone with very refined hearing would have been able to hear the girl curled up in the backseat. He could not. Nevertheless, he noted the license plate number. He pulled out his fountain pen and a card.