The History of Danish Dreams: A Novel by Peter Hoeg Read Free Book Online Page B

moves with a waggish youthfulness that, in itself, blasphemes dreadfully against time. This thought, however, strikes them as being so unwonted that they all avoid one another’s eyes and push it away.
    The gap left by the Old Lady was filled by the way in which the business automatically continued to flourish. To begin with, the journalists were shocked when the necessary, but unwritten, articles seemed to materialize in the wicker baskets on their desks. Every morning the printers were astonished to find that deliveries of paper had turned up, inexplicably, all by themselves, and the office managers tried to conceal their amazement at the ever-swelling stream of orders pouring in, all unaided, from every part of the country and, as time went on, from distant continents with unpronounceable delivery addresses or postal codes written in exotic characters. After a while, however, their minds were set at ease by the thought that the Old Lady had merely withdrawn, like some Egyptian pharaoh, into a distant tomb or one of her luxurious privies, from where—from a gilded sarcophagus roomy enough for a body that was bound still to be as big and as agile as a rhinoceros’s—she could keep an eye on them all. And they saw that it was possible for her to act in such a fashion because everything had been set into perpetual motion—in short, because she had succeeded in realizing the dream of the nouveau riche, the upstart, the parvenu, the tyrant, and the company president: that of having a total, one hundred percent firm grip on time.
    Her quiescence must also, I think, have been reinforced because Christoffer Teander sat there, every day, bent over his columns, only straightening up to flick away a speck of dust that had fallen onto a lapel as immaculate as his unnaturally white collars, or onto his shirtfronts, which were stiff as the armor in the banqueting hall (fitted out to the Old Lady’s specifications). Such small gestures, which would in others have indicated a lively interest in their outward appearance, made Christoffer look more like a puppet or a jumping jack than ever before, more than when he had, as a little boy, been the mute observer of his parents’ social calls. And since he never spoke to his employees, it never occurred to anyone—not even the housemaids who surveyed his nakedness, without any curiosity, every morning and evening—that behind the lackluster forehead, the unseeing eyes, and the wavering contours there hid a human being. The announcement of his engagement did nothing to alter this impression.
    One morning all the family’s social and business acquaintances received a white card announcing the glad tidings of the engagement between Christoffer Ludwig Teander Rabow and Katarina Cornelius Bak, the dean’s daughter. Everyone thought it was a joke. They all knew for a fact that Christoffer Ludwig and the dean’s daughter had never met. For one thing, throughout his childhood and adolescence, Christoffer had only ever left his oversized office on a very few occasions. And for another, he had always been duly escorted by the servants or his parents. And lastly, Katarina had, at these times, been away, visiting the German spas, in vain attempts to cure a cough which, even then, sounded bad. Nevertheless, this card planted a nagging doubt in most minds, since, even though it bore no signature, it was printed in Venus Extra Bold. This typeface, together with the heavy, bittersweet scent of dried Australian carnations, reminded most recipients of Christoffer’s mother and her grip on the future. The Reverend Mr. Cornelius himself was at first taken aback, then angry, then furious. Finally he calmed down and entered, instead, a mood of silent reflection in which, for some days, his thoughts revolved around his daughter, whose silence was broken only by bouts of coughing. At last he sought out Christoffer Teander, unearthing him in his office. Wordlessly, the dean places the invitation in front of