The Elephant Keepers' Children (5 page)

I don't know what your own family is like, but in our house we all have to get up so early, and there are so many lunches to pack, and so many lessons at school, and so much homework, and so much football afterward, and so many people paying visits to the rectory, not least because my mother and father service all three of Finø's churches by turn, that in the day-today run of things you can get the feeling that Hurricane Lulu is wreaking havoc in the Kattegat and has moved into the rectory with us for good.

But then what can happen is that the wind dies down, usually on a Friday or Saturday, and at once the waters are calm and a brief opportunity arises for us to realize that our being a family is not merely theoretical fancy, and when such a moment occurs it tends to do so in the kitchen, and it was at just such a moment that we made the discovery.

Father was preparing food. He says that's the way he relaxes, though when he's doing it you'd be forgiven for thinking he was a butcher on piecework. He says, and even believes,
that the food he makes is the same he enjoyed in his childhood home in Nordhavn, in the northern part of Finø, of which he speaks as though it were drenched in sunlight and tears of happiness, even though we actually met his mother, our grandmother, before she died, presumably of pent-up gall. We stayed with her and are therefore able to completely rule out the possibility that she had ever been capable of preparing food.

Nonetheless, my father does on occasion succeed in contriving delicacies of a sort with his old meat press and recipes for dishes from medieval Finø, and at this moment, as what I am telling you about is happening, he is preparing duck rillettes, and pigs' feet in jelly as stiff as a brick.

Mother is sitting at the table with a pair of nippers and a soldering iron, a watchmaker's magnifying glass, a computer, microphones, and an oscillograph, and she is constructing an opening mechanism for the larder that is to work by means of speech recognition. Seated on the bench beside her is Hans with his star map. Next to him, keeping an eye on everything, is Tilte. Beneath the table, Basker lies wheezing as though he has asthma, which he hasn't, but he has the oxygen intake of a greyhound, and he likes to listen to the sound it makes when he breathes.

And seated in the good chair is me, if you can imagine me as I was then, a small boy, rather delicate and refined, though at that moment simply immersed in being a part of all the nice things going on around me.

It's one of those moments at which you might venture to believe that you belong to a family.

Then something happens that at first seems quite innocuous.

Mother is setting the computer to recognize our voices, and while she is doing so, she is also humming the first verses of “Monday in the Rain on Lonely Avenue.”

It's one of Mother's favorites. She treasures Bach and Schubert, but what really moves her is “Monday in the Rain,” so for us it's the most natural thing in the world to hear this old Danish evergreen. The risk is that you take it for granted. And for that reason the whole family is given a little jolt when Tilte suddenly says, “Mother, does that song have special significance for you and Father?”

Silence descends upon the kitchen. Mother clears her throat.

“When I was nineteen,” she says, “my friend Bermuda, whom you all know, encouraged me to enter the annual talent competition at the Finø Hotel. I practiced for three months, and when the big day arrived Bermuda and I went along together. I took the stage wearing a raincoat and a pill-box hat, and sang ‘Monday in the Rain on Lonely Avenue.' I'd even choreographed a little dance to go with it. The lights were rather glaring, so it was only in the middle of the last verse I got the feeling that I wasn't in a talent competition at all. After I finished, I discovered it was the annual meeting of the North Jutland Clergymen's Association.”

For two whole minutes, we remain respectfully silent. And then Tilte speaks.

“I hope you got your own back on Bermuda.”

“I was about to take my revenge at that very moment,” Mother replied. “But then something happened. Your father came up to me. It was the first time I ever saw him.”

“What did he say?” Tilte asks.

Mother returns the soldering iron to its holder. She puts the reel of tin solder down in front of her. And then she moves aside the magnifying glass.

“He told me how happy I would be. How wonderful my life was going to be with him.”

We sit with that for a moment. We know it's true, because that's the way Father is. He believes he is exhibiting the most heartfelt Christian sympathy by telling people that the experience of their lives is in store for them, if only they get to know him a little better.

Now Mother rises to her feet and approaches Father. To his credit, he blushes, and despite what one might think, and what many of us believe, he thereby demonstrates that he possesses humility. He looks into Mother's eyes, and the jellied pigs' feet are consigned to oblivion.

“And do you know what, Konstantin?” my mother says. “You were right.”

Then she kisses him, and in one way it's deeply embarrassing for all of us, and in another we can be glad no one else is here to witness it.

Until that moment, everything that has happened has been rather commonplace and under control, and within the range of what you could observe in any number of Finø families on a
good day. But at the very moment Mother releases Father and is about to step back to the table, Tilte speaks.

“Listen.”

What then occurs is hard to describe, though it does involve all six of us listening for a moment. Not to things being said or done but to what is at the core of it all. And for a few sensational seconds, everything begins to float: the rectory, the storks on the roof, the larder, even the jellied pigs' feet have become weightless, and inside that weightlessness the door is opening.

And then we can keep it up no longer. Intensity of that kind is like training for a run. You must build up your form slowly. So Mother sits down, Father sticks his head back into his duck rillettes, Hans turns his gaze to the stars, and Basker has a renewed attack of asthma. The spell is broken.

But once you've realized what happens if you lean into love, you will never forget it, ever again.

And that is what returns to me in the courtyard of Hans's student residence when I sense how good it is to have a brother and a sister, and Tilte looks me in the eye.

Then we hear an engine.

It is a minibus with tinted windows, and even before it turns into the courtyard we duck.

It parks behind us.

“They'll be looking for a taxi,” Tilte whispers, “not a horse-drawn carriage.”

She's right. The three individuals who climb out of the vehicle give the carriage and the horses only cursory glances, and then they go inside the building.

The two in front, a man and a woman, are plainclothes police officers.

Every other Friday in the summer season, the Finø ferry, besides the usual six hundred tourists, deposits two plainclothes police officers onto the island to reinforce the local constabulary, and among six hundred tourists those two police officers stick out, in their own inconspicuous way, like two tree frogs on a fish rissole. So we are in no doubt, even now, as to what is afoot, and all of it is basically as we had expected. The real surprise is that the woman who follows them in is Bodil Hippopotamus.

We abandon the carriage and reach the black minibus in an instant. That's another good thing about brothers and sisters: when you really need them, you find you can play together as a team and everyone knows their position.

We pull open the door. There's room inside for seven, and in the back is a cage for dogs, and five of the seats have bottled mineral water in the holders.

“They'll be taking Peter and Basker and me,” says Tilte. “We can be sure of that. So you'll have to go now, Hans. Stay with a friend and keep your head down. Petrus and I aren't really rated in their book, we're still childen to them, so we'll stand a better chance of finding out what's going on.”

All four of us can see there's no alternative. Hans climbs onto the box of the carriage. His teeth are clenched and he's on the verge of despair. He looks back at us one last time, then clicks his tongue and the carriage is away.

The corridor of the student residence
is empty and on the door of his room Hans has affixed a map of Finø and an even bigger one of the firmament. The door is closed.

Tilte opens it and we step into a combined cloakroom and kitchen from where a door leads into the bathroom and another into the living room. We open that one with caution.

Bodil Hippopotamus is sitting in an armchair. The two police officers are searching for something and it's not something they've simply mislaid, because they've removed Hans's books from the shelves and most of the contents from his cupboards and now they look like they're about to pull apart his bed.

Tilte gets out her mobile and snaps a couple of photos of the police at work, and then the phone is back in her pocket.

Bodil sees us first and beckons us over to the armchair, because that's the kind of person Bodil is, seated on top of her throne, and people have to go to her.

“How nice to see you,” she says. “Where's your brother?”

She opens her palms so you can put your little hand in hers.

“He's in the basement putting his bike away,” says Tilte.

“We're unable to contact your parents. We've no reason to believe they're anything but safe and well, but we can't find them. So now I shall have to ask you something. They told the parish council they would be in Spain, on an island called La Gomera. Is that what they told you as well?”

“We'd very much like to answer your question,” says Tilte. “But before we do, we need to know why you should think they aren't where they say they are.”

I know nothing about hippopotami. But I think that in the great mud bath of all things, the hippopotamus is one of the animals that is boss. This would be true of Bodil, too. She tightens her grip on Tilte's hand.

“I'll ask the questions to begin with,” she says. “Have you arranged with your parents that they should phone you?”

“We'd very much like to answer that,” says Tilte.

As she speaks, she slips her phone into my pocket.

“But first,” she goes on, “we need to ask you about something that concerns us, and that is whether you're in possession of the proper documentation.”

Bodil frowns.

“We have the documents required by the social services to take you into our custody,” she says. “Under what we call Paragraph Fifty.”

“That's not what I was getting at,” says Tilte. “I was thinking of the warrant required to enter my brother's room and search through his belongings.”

Now a silence descends. And the police officers realize they're up against something here.

“What we're afraid of,” says Tilte, “on your behalf, is that this should get into the papers. That it should become a story, substantiated by the photographs I've just taken.”

Bodil and the female officer lunge at Tilte and grab hold of her all at once. But the telephone is with me and I'm nearly through the door.

“Petrus has the phone with the pictures on it,” says Tilte.

The male officer has a look in his eye.

“I play a lightning right-wing,” I caution him. “Before you reach me, I'll be away as if I'd dissolved in front of you.”

The three adults have ground to a halt. I sense their indecision. And I sense something else as well, which is that they are under pressure and are afraid of something.

“You'll never catch Petrus,” says Tilte. “He'll go to the papers and you'll be on the front page.
Police and municipal director remove children from rectory home without requisite authorization
.”

Bodil gathers herself magnificently. You don't get to be municipal director without what Tilte calls strategic intelligence.

“We're doing this for your own good.”

“And we're grateful,” Tilte replies. “But we need more transparency. Why do you think Mother and Father aren't in La Gomera?”

Bodil is on her feet now.

“They never left the country,” she says.

“Do the police keep an eye on all Denmark's clergy?” asks Tilte.

“They've been keeping an eye on your parents.”

They're nice to us in the minibus
.

Bodil asks why Hans is taking so long putting his bike away and nearly has a stroke when Tilte tells her that was just a fib and that we have no idea where he is now. Bodil then tries to call his number, but he doesn't reply. After that, she calls another number and tells someone that we're with her but that Hans is gone, and the voice on the other end says something that calms her down, and then I delete the incriminating photos on Tilte's mobile and everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

It's a peaceful ride. They let me sit with Basker in my lap. He's more a person than a dog and won't sit in the cage. They stop at a service station and buy us sandwiches and sweets, and the mood is bearable until we get there.

And where we get is the landing strip at Tune, near Roskilde. They run flights here to Finø with several daily departures in the tourist season.

Most people get to Finø by ferry from Grenå, which first puts into Anholt to send a handful of bewildered tourists ashore. They have no idea what could have been in store for them if only they had remained on board. After Anholt, the ferry sails on to Finø, and the final hour of the crossing affords
the passenger the clear sense that he is now on his way out of the Kattegat and sailing toward the North Atlantic, so anyone prone to seasickness and whose finances so allow will tend to go by air.

The landing strip at Tune is situated in a woodland clearing and comprises a shed with large panes of glass inserted into it, and a strip of tarmac extending seven hundred and fifty meters. On days without scheduled flights it's lent out to the local youth club, whose custom-built skateboard ramps can be rolled away if air traffic should wish to land. For this reason, aircraft servicing Finø are small single-engined Cessnas requiring only short distances for takeoff and landing.