Road was empty and deserted. Behind drawn curtains untroubled parents and red-cheeked children were asleep, his public, unaware that out here in the cold, Kasper Krone walked his via dolorosa, freezing, with no money for a taxi after having lost in poker for the first time in ten years.
Poker was Rasper's game, and had always been. Poker had depth and complexity like Bach's music; a sure bet and a rhythmically played hand lasted about as long as one of his small choral arrangements. Bach would have been a great poker player, if he hadn't been so busy. More than fifteen hundred works, many of them under constant revision up until his death.
Kasper had played in all the major capitals, but for him poker belonged in the Frederiksberg section of Copenhagen on C. F. Rich Road. Where the doorman wasn't a foreign legionnaire and serial killer, but a former boxer with fists like sugar beets. Where there was mutual familiarity, as in a community-garden club. And concentration, like musicians auditioning for the Radio Symphony Orchestra, each man and woman bent over his or her sheet music.
But tonight he had lost, even the Saab at the end; when he handed over the car keys he'd felt like he was turned to stone. He hadn't had enough humility to borrow money for a taxi. As the bus drove through the woods, he went through the night's games in his mind; he found no mistakes--he could not understand it.
When he crossed Strand Road he saw there was light in the trailer. He approached in a half circle; the light flickered like a fire. As he was getting out the lead pipe he identified the sound. It was E-flat major, happy, playful, uninhibited, like the first movement of Trio Sonata in E-Flat Major. He put the pipe back in place and walked in.
KlaraMaria stood with her back to him. She must have been lighting the stove, and then come to a standstill before the undulating world of the live coals. The light of the small flames flickered over her face; she did not turn around.
"You found me," she said. "Tell me how you did it."
"I drew a circle," he said.
* * *
He had awakened in the trailer the morning after their first meeting, after she had disappeared by Bagsværd Lake.
He had slept only a couple of hours. He took out one of the four-centimeter-scale maps. Stina's compass. Using as the center the spot where he let the little girl off, he had drawn a circle with a radius of three miles. Maybe she had been driven away in a car. But she had been ready to walk--he could tell that.
No ordinary child walks three miles at two a.m. from somewhere on the outskirts of Bagsværd when the temperature is around freezing. She had not been an ordinary child.
The circle enclosed Bagsværd, Lyngby some of Vangede, a corner of Gentofte, the southern part of Virum, Fure Lake, and Hareskovby, some of Gladsaxe. It was seven in the morning; he took out his violin and played the beginning of Beethoven's Opus 131. It begins in darkness as a fugue, but then climbs upward and into Paradise. When the sky grew light and office hours had begun, he picked up the telephone.
He had planned to call the Ministry for Social Affairs, but with the receiver in his hand, before dialing the number, he could suddenly hear how he would sound to an outsider. A middle-aged single man is looking for little girls, without being able to explain why, even to himself. He held a weak hand and had tough opponents. He put down the receiver and took two copies of his last CD, the solo partitas and sonatas, recorded in St. Mary's Church outside Lübeck. Then he got into his car and drove to Grøndal Parkway. To Circus Blaff. To Sonja.
* * *
Sonja had started at the bottom. Kasper had met her when they were very young, in the Sans Souci variety theater in Kolding and then the Damhus Inn owned by the Stefansen dynasty. From the very beginning, he could hear that she was driven by something. Her system had a sound like a motor that can't stop and just keeps running until it burns out,
Poker was Rasper's game, and had always been. Poker had depth and complexity like Bach's music; a sure bet and a rhythmically played hand lasted about as long as one of his small choral arrangements. Bach would have been a great poker player, if he hadn't been so busy. More than fifteen hundred works, many of them under constant revision up until his death.
Kasper had played in all the major capitals, but for him poker belonged in the Frederiksberg section of Copenhagen on C. F. Rich Road. Where the doorman wasn't a foreign legionnaire and serial killer, but a former boxer with fists like sugar beets. Where there was mutual familiarity, as in a community-garden club. And concentration, like musicians auditioning for the Radio Symphony Orchestra, each man and woman bent over his or her sheet music.
But tonight he had lost, even the Saab at the end; when he handed over the car keys he'd felt like he was turned to stone. He hadn't had enough humility to borrow money for a taxi. As the bus drove through the woods, he went through the night's games in his mind; he found no mistakes--he could not understand it.
When he crossed Strand Road he saw there was light in the trailer. He approached in a half circle; the light flickered like a fire. As he was getting out the lead pipe he identified the sound. It was E-flat major, happy, playful, uninhibited, like the first movement of Trio Sonata in E-Flat Major. He put the pipe back in place and walked in.
KlaraMaria stood with her back to him. She must have been lighting the stove, and then come to a standstill before the undulating world of the live coals. The light of the small flames flickered over her face; she did not turn around.
"You found me," she said. "Tell me how you did it."
"I drew a circle," he said.
* * *
He had awakened in the trailer the morning after their first meeting, after she had disappeared by Bagsværd Lake.
He had slept only a couple of hours. He took out one of the four-centimeter-scale maps. Stina's compass. Using as the center the spot where he let the little girl off, he had drawn a circle with a radius of three miles. Maybe she had been driven away in a car. But she had been ready to walk--he could tell that.
No ordinary child walks three miles at two a.m. from somewhere on the outskirts of Bagsværd when the temperature is around freezing. She had not been an ordinary child.
The circle enclosed Bagsværd, Lyngby some of Vangede, a corner of Gentofte, the southern part of Virum, Fure Lake, and Hareskovby, some of Gladsaxe. It was seven in the morning; he took out his violin and played the beginning of Beethoven's Opus 131. It begins in darkness as a fugue, but then climbs upward and into Paradise. When the sky grew light and office hours had begun, he picked up the telephone.
He had planned to call the Ministry for Social Affairs, but with the receiver in his hand, before dialing the number, he could suddenly hear how he would sound to an outsider. A middle-aged single man is looking for little girls, without being able to explain why, even to himself. He held a weak hand and had tough opponents. He put down the receiver and took two copies of his last CD, the solo partitas and sonatas, recorded in St. Mary's Church outside Lübeck. Then he got into his car and drove to Grøndal Parkway. To Circus Blaff. To Sonja.
* * *
Sonja had started at the bottom. Kasper had met her when they were very young, in the Sans Souci variety theater in Kolding and then the Damhus Inn owned by the Stefansen dynasty. From the very beginning, he could hear that she was driven by something. Her system had a sound like a motor that can't stop and just keeps running until it burns out,
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