The Quiet Girl by Peter Høeg Read Free Book Online Page B

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