The Elephant Keepers' Children (32 page)

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
.”

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.

“
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.

An hour has passed
, and Tilte and I have briefly, yet conscientiously, related everything we've been through. We've put the newspaper clippings out on the table, and the invoices from the safe-deposit box, and as we run through events Hans
begins to mull things over and eventually he gets to his feet as though intending to break something, perhaps a load-bearing wall or two. Once again this side of him emerges that is familiar to us only from those few occasions on which misguided tourists have made the mistake of picking on him and his female companions. Apart from that,
meek
is the word that most obviously springs to mind to describe my brother's psychology.

But now something has happened. So when he hears all this about our parents he gets to his feet.

“They're planning a robbery,” he says. “They're planning to steal religious treasures that mean a great deal to a great many people.”

“But something made them change their plans,” Tilte adds.

“They want more,” says Hans. “If they changed their plans, it's because they thought of something that would increase their yield. So I'm against our helping them. We should let things pan out. Even if it's into the toilet.”

Now Ashanti says something, and we have to concentrate on what she is saying in order not to become wholly absorbed by the sound of her voice.

“I've never met your parents,” she says, “but I sense how very fond of them you are. That clinches matters. If you love someone, it will never go away.”

Now that she has spoken, her being a high priestess makes perfect sense, because it's plain to anyone how easily she might hold a congregation spellbound.

Hans certainly is spellbound. He sits down.

Then Tilte's phone, which by rights is Katinka's but now has a new SIM card inside it, rings.

Tilte answers the call and listens for a moment, and then her expression becomes grave. A minute passes, perhaps. The call ends and she puts down the phone.

“That was Leonora,” she says. “She's worried. She wants us to meet her in fifteen minutes.”

The Institute of Buddhist studies
is located behind the church on the square called Nikolaj Plads. It's a quiet, idyllic place. People sit at small café tables in the square, enjoying that particularly Danish combination of second-degree burns and frostbite, because the temperature is twenty-seven degrees Celsius in the sun and minus something in the shade. Viewed from the outside, the institute looks like a place full of Danish history. There's a gateway whose door resembles that of a church, and the gold lettering on a plaque says this is where the illustrious Danish poet Sigurd Skullsmacker lived until his rather untimely death in 1779.