The Elephant Keepers' Children (48 page)

Thereupon descended the silence of the grave of which I have previously spoken at length, and with it plenty of opportunity to reach inside if one only had the presence of mind to do so. It was a silence that remained unbroken until Ashanti added that she felt certain it was going to be a girl, and that she had already decided on a name. The baby, she said, would be named after our mother, Clara, and would bear the middle name Nebuchadnezzar, familiar from the Old Testament and hot stuff in Haiti. Then there were two family names, Duplaisir and Finø, and furthermore Ashanti had felt her baby kicking inside for the very first time on board the little Cessna during the flight to Finø, and for this reason, and because she wished to modernize the age-old Haitian tradition of giving children names that were far too long, their little treasure would quite simply be called Clara Nebuchadnezzar Flyvia Propella Duplaisir Finø.

We are, as you know, rather hardened to unusual names on Finø, and yet I would say that Ashanti's announcement was followed by a somewhat prolonged pause, during which
the only sound to be heard was Basker's wheezing, and even that seemed to be approaching hyperventilation. But then Tilte pulled Ashanti into a corner and told her it was a beautiful name, though a little on the ornamental side, a matter that might make the child the object of unwanted attention from dark forces and the black magic that slumbers beneath the outward Christian appearance of Finø's inhabitants and that very easily becomes jealous of small children with fancy names, so why not make do with Clara Duplaisir Finø, and that was what they eventually decided on.

I have on several occasions drawn your attention to how dramatic events often seem to come in clusters, and this was true of this particular evening, too, because no sooner had Tilte and Ashanti returned to their seats than Great-Grandma cleared her throat and announced that she had something to say to us, which was that she had decided how she wanted to die.

At this point we became concerned. On the most recent occasions Great-Grandma had stayed with us, she had allowed me to stir the buttermilk soup while she herself ran the show from her wheelchair, so when we heard her say what she said we all feared the worst.

“I have decided to die with a chuckle,” Great-Grandma said. “A hearty chuckle. I've always thought that would be the most splendid way to go. But why, you might ask, am I telling you this now? And the answer is that I don't anticipate any of you being there to witness it. And why not? Because I intend to survive you all, including little Flyvia Propella. And why
would I intend to do such a thing? The answer to that is that I have taken a young and athletic lover. And now I should like to present him to the family.”

The door opens and in strides Rickardt Three Lions clutching his archlute, and he walks up and seats himself on Great-Grandma's lap.

None of us saw this coming. Not even Tilte. And I must say quite frankly that a moment passes before we regain our composure and natural politeness and are able to tuck away under the table the questions that crop up in such a situation, primarily, of course, the issue of whether Great-Grandma is now of the nobility.

While everything hangs in the air, I glance across at Tilte and can tell that she needs to swallow this, because Great-Grandma's lap has been Tilte's for as long as anyone can remember.

Many, including myself, would be inclined to believe that we have now exceeded the number of revelations a family can cope with in a single evening. But no sooner have we gathered ourselves than Father makes an announcement.

“I'm resigning from the church. Mother will no longer be playing the organ. We're going on a pilgrimage. Starting in Vienna, at Knize's, and taking in the great cafés. And when we come home your mother is going to start a small factory. For my part, I shall be writing a cookery book. On spiritual cuisine.”

At this point, Tilte and Father exchange glances. Neither she nor the rest of us are taken in by Father's jovial tone. This is deadly serious.

“I promise you,” Father says with emphasis, “that my cookbook will contain not a word about the Holy Spirit materializing in the duck rillettes.”

We exhale collectively. I intentionally say we exhale rather than heave a sigh of relief. Because with African elephants in mind, you will understand that when you have parents like ours no guarantee is ever going to accord complete coverage.

And then Father says, “How about a beer?”

Meticulously he places a half-liter bottle of the Finø Brewery's Special Brew in front of each and every one of us.

I don't know about your own family. Perhaps you were given blackcurrant rum in your baby bottle and served 150-proof moonshine at your confirmation. But in our house, Mother and Father have never once offered me or Tilte or Basker alcohol. This is the first time, and one can well understand why. It's because every time grown-ups crack open a bottle, they hear the roar from the abyss inside them and choose to think that the sound comes from their children. So this is profound indeed. We fill our glasses and say cheers, and all of us know that at this moment we are taking part in a religious rite of quite the same solemnity as the Eucharist at Finø Town Church.

And then I sense that another guest is present, and that this person is seated behind me. The feeling is so very real it prompts me to turn around, only to discover that no one is there, and I realize that this is loneliness. In the midst of good friends, with Basker at my feet and Conny at my side, I still feel completely alone and deserted.

I cannot remain in the kitchen. I stand up without drawing attention to myself and go outside. I walk slowly toward the place where the town comes to an end and the woods begin. The night is dark, the sky sparkling with stars. This is no longer the sky I once wrote about in the tourist brochure. It too has changed. There are more stars now. So many, it's as if they're seizing the firmament. As though the night sky is shifting its weight from the foot that is darkness to the one that is the light of the stars.

Then I put my arm around my loneliness, and I become aware that she is a girl. And for the first time in my life, I stop trying to comfort myself and keep her at bay.

I am looking straight into what I have always feared the most. I am losing them, losing everything. This is what I saw coming in Conny's apartment on Toldbodgade. But now it's stronger and real. Hans is gone, Tilte is gone, and Great-Grandma is gone. Soon the rectory will be depopulated. Mother and Father will be gone.

And now you might say that Conny will surely remain. But at this moment in time, that thought is of little use. Because what I feel is that the loneliness I am now embracing is something not even the person you love can help you with.

It is the loneliness of being enclosed within the room that is oneself. I understand this now for the first time in my life. That the self is a room inside the prison, a room that will always be different from other rooms. For this reason the self will in some way always be alone, and always inside the building of which it is a part.

I can't explain it any better than that. Yet it feels insurmountable.

I walk with my arm around that insurmountability. I hold her tight and do not comfort myself. I can say that quite truthfully. I sense how fond I am of the others who are behind me in the night: Mother and Father, Tilte and Hans and Basker, Conny and Great-Grandma, Jakob and Ashanti, and Rickardt and Nebuchadnezzar Flyvia Propella. All my human rooms.

And then something happens.

In a way, it's like when you're on the football pitch. When the defense is coming at you it's easy to be hypnotized. You see your opponents, the obstacle. You fail to see the opening, the gaps in between.

That's what happens now, all by itself. I shift my attention. From the blackness of the night to the light of the stars. It's my consciousness doing the dustman's trick. My attention is turned one way, toward loneliness, and I go the other. From the feeling of loneliness to what surrounds it. From being trapped within myself, inside the joys and sorrows that make up Peter Finø and that reside like tiny, floating islands adrift within us all, I shift my attention to what those islands are adrift upon.

That's all I do. It's something anyone can do. I change nothing. I don't try to make the loneliness go away. I just let go of it.

It begins to remove itself. She begins to remove herself. And then she is gone.

What remains in a way is me. But in another way, it's just a very deep feeling of happiness.

Behind me, I hear someone approach. Conny. She nuzzles up close.

“We're all rooms,” I say. “And as long as you're a room, you're imprisoned. But there's a way out, and it's not through a door, because no door exists. All you have to do is see the opening.”

She takes my head in both her hands.

“Some girls are fortunate enough to be in love with deep and intelligent boys,” she says. “And then there's the rest of us, who have to make do.”

And then she kisses me, turns, and walks back toward the rectory.

I must admit to being rather in a muddle, with one thing and another. So I stay put. There are times when a man needs to be alone.

It's started to rain. Light drizzle. And with the rain comes a sense of gratitude, though I wouldn't know what Denmark's Meteorological Office would say about that. I am overwhelmed with joy, so intense it cannot be suppressed. Not by my family dissolving. Nor by the fact that when I shared my infinite wisdom with her, the girl I love simply gave me a kiss and one of those comments women make that cause men to lie sleepless in their beds until dawn. Whereupon she floated away, back to the turbot.

I raise my hands to the sky. And then I begin to dance.

It's a slow dance. Nothing that would make the grade at Ifigenia Bruhn's Dancing School. It comes from within and demands my full concentration. Which must be why it takes a while before I notice Karl Marauder.

He's standing in the gateway of their house. I pause. We stare at each other.

“I'm dancing the Finø Waltz,” I tell him. “By which I express my gratitude for being alive.”

A great many things may be said about Karl Marauder Lander, and many people, myself included, would not hesitate to say them. Nonetheless, he is widely admired for his ability to cope with stress. And that's what he's doing now. His face is expressionless.

“Would that be a private dance?” he asks. “Or can anyone join in?”

Grace
is one of those words that should only ever be handled while wearing velvet gloves, and only when nothing less will do. And yet I must say that I believe it to be the only word capable of adequately describing the fact that life is organized in such a way that even the likes of Karl Marauder may nurture the hope that the natural downward spiral of their lives will one day be halted, and that at the end of the new pathway that appears before them, opportunity lies, delicate, hazardous, and refined.

“Just follow me,” I say.

He raises his arms. The rain begins to pour. And slowly, beneath the glittering night sky, Peter Finø and Karl Marauder Lander dance the Finø Waltz.

With thanks to Lisbeth Lawaetz Clausen for the heart piece in the puzzle.

With thanks to the staff of my Danish publishers, Rosinante&Co, and especially to my editor, Jakob Malling Lambert, for insightful, inventive, and insistent help in wielding both propelling pencil and scalpel.