from the ramp. In a rebuilt Volkswagen. Performed as a comedy routine for the first and last time in world history. Kasper had carefully avoided reading about the accident; he had been less than ten miles away when it happened. Both occupants were supposed to have died.
He moved his head a fraction of an inch. The glow in the vehicle came from a votive candle; it was burning between the gearshift and a small icon of the Virgin Mary with Baby Jesus.
The man noticed Kasper's movement.
"I pray constantly. It's a trait that stuck with me. I first noticed it right after the accident. I started to pray. After I came to on the respirator I prayed all the time. And have ever since."
Kasper leaned forward. To listen to the system in the front seat. He let his hand glide appreciatively over the upholstery.
"Twelve cylinders," said the man. "There are only seven Jaguars used as taxis. In the whole world. As far as anyone knows. I have all seven."
"So you recovered."
"I started with a Lincoln Town Car limousine. It cost forty thousand dollars. And a fake license. After I was discharged from the hospital. By next year I'll have ninety-five percent of the limousine business in Copenhagen."
"You must have seen very . . ."
Young people do not know how to parry compliments. The spine in front of Kasper straightened.
"It's very clear to me now what Paul means by saying it's through suffering we become united with Christ."
"Like Eckehart," said Kasper. "Are you familiar with Eckehart? 'Suffering is the swiftest horse to heaven.' It was this awareness, of course, that made you realize I was the one who ordered a taxi."
They turned off the Ring Road into Vangede, then from Vangede into Gentofte. The sounds changed; Gentofte had an old clang of porous optimism. An expectation that when the polar caps melt and the "bridge neighborhoods" of Østerbro, Nørrebro, and Vesterbro sink to the bottom, then the area from Gova to the Blidah Park housing complex will float on top like an inner tube.
The car turned and stopped. It was parked discreetly in the dark on one of the roads leading to the racetrack. The clinic lay about fifty yards away.
Kasper pulled out the taxi voucher from Moerk, his glasses, and the fountain pen; he filled in the blanks with the maximum amount, signed it, tore the voucher in two, held out one half toward the young man.
"I'll be gone twenty minutes at the most. Will you still be here when I come out?"
"This is a maternity clinic."
"I'm going to assist in a birth."
The young man took the yellow paper.
"It must be a great experience," he said. "For the baby. And the mother."
Kasper looked into the impudent yellow eyes.
"I ordered the taxi from my home," he said. "For tax reasons, the telephone isn't listed in my name. So my name never appeared on the screen. The question is: How did you find me? And why?"
* * *
Fie crossed Strand Road and passed through the sound of his most basic traumas. The salty coolness from the Sound, the parklike silence of the surroundings, childhood memories from twelve different addresses between Charlottenlund Fort and Rungsted Harbor. The silent weight of the buildings' affluence, granite, marble, brass. His own unresolved relationship to wealth.
The glass door was as heavy as the door to a vault, the floor mahogany. Not genetically engineered wood, but the dark kind that has stood on its roots for two hundred years and looked down at the carnivals in Santiago de Cuba. The room was lit by Poul Henningsen vintage lamps. The woman behind the desk had steel-gray eyes and steel-gray hair; in order to make sure he got by her, he should have put down two hundred thousand kroner and made an appointment two years before he became pregnant.
She was the epitome of the Bad Mother archetype he had not yet integrated. It is extremely depressing to have turned forty-two and still be performing among fragments of your parents that have yet to be carried out of the ring.
"There's less than a
He moved his head a fraction of an inch. The glow in the vehicle came from a votive candle; it was burning between the gearshift and a small icon of the Virgin Mary with Baby Jesus.
The man noticed Kasper's movement.
"I pray constantly. It's a trait that stuck with me. I first noticed it right after the accident. I started to pray. After I came to on the respirator I prayed all the time. And have ever since."
Kasper leaned forward. To listen to the system in the front seat. He let his hand glide appreciatively over the upholstery.
"Twelve cylinders," said the man. "There are only seven Jaguars used as taxis. In the whole world. As far as anyone knows. I have all seven."
"So you recovered."
"I started with a Lincoln Town Car limousine. It cost forty thousand dollars. And a fake license. After I was discharged from the hospital. By next year I'll have ninety-five percent of the limousine business in Copenhagen."
"You must have seen very . . ."
Young people do not know how to parry compliments. The spine in front of Kasper straightened.
"It's very clear to me now what Paul means by saying it's through suffering we become united with Christ."
"Like Eckehart," said Kasper. "Are you familiar with Eckehart? 'Suffering is the swiftest horse to heaven.' It was this awareness, of course, that made you realize I was the one who ordered a taxi."
They turned off the Ring Road into Vangede, then from Vangede into Gentofte. The sounds changed; Gentofte had an old clang of porous optimism. An expectation that when the polar caps melt and the "bridge neighborhoods" of Østerbro, Nørrebro, and Vesterbro sink to the bottom, then the area from Gova to the Blidah Park housing complex will float on top like an inner tube.
The car turned and stopped. It was parked discreetly in the dark on one of the roads leading to the racetrack. The clinic lay about fifty yards away.
Kasper pulled out the taxi voucher from Moerk, his glasses, and the fountain pen; he filled in the blanks with the maximum amount, signed it, tore the voucher in two, held out one half toward the young man.
"I'll be gone twenty minutes at the most. Will you still be here when I come out?"
"This is a maternity clinic."
"I'm going to assist in a birth."
The young man took the yellow paper.
"It must be a great experience," he said. "For the baby. And the mother."
Kasper looked into the impudent yellow eyes.
"I ordered the taxi from my home," he said. "For tax reasons, the telephone isn't listed in my name. So my name never appeared on the screen. The question is: How did you find me? And why?"
* * *
Fie crossed Strand Road and passed through the sound of his most basic traumas. The salty coolness from the Sound, the parklike silence of the surroundings, childhood memories from twelve different addresses between Charlottenlund Fort and Rungsted Harbor. The silent weight of the buildings' affluence, granite, marble, brass. His own unresolved relationship to wealth.
The glass door was as heavy as the door to a vault, the floor mahogany. Not genetically engineered wood, but the dark kind that has stood on its roots for two hundred years and looked down at the carnivals in Santiago de Cuba. The room was lit by Poul Henningsen vintage lamps. The woman behind the desk had steel-gray eyes and steel-gray hair; in order to make sure he got by her, he should have put down two hundred thousand kroner and made an appointment two years before he became pregnant.
She was the epitome of the Bad Mother archetype he had not yet integrated. It is extremely depressing to have turned forty-two and still be performing among fragments of your parents that have yet to be carried out of the ring.
"There's less than a
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