the sound by which life's desperadoes recognize each other. Her desperation was directed toward wealth. She had left the ring, studied economics, and then returned to the circus. The building on Grøndal Parkway had three floors, four hundred employees, administration offices for four circuses, several music halls and theaters, a booking agency, an advertising company that had followed in the footsteps of Erik Stockmarr, the famed circus poster artist of the fifties, when nobody else could. And an accounting office. She owned all of it.
She was a little older than he. A little taller, a little heavier. She had three children. A splendid husband, deep and vigorous and in C-major, like Mozart's last symphony. And besides the husband, lovers too.
Twenty years ago Sonja and Kasper had been lovers; they had not lost contact since then, and never would as long as they lived. SheAlmighty awards lifetime partners to some people. Brahms got Clara Schumann, Mozart got the clarinetist Anton Stadler as a lifelong partner in pin billiards. Maybe it has something to do with the thing called love.
Sonja's office resembled the Defense Command in Vedbæk, where Kasper had performed several times; the military love clowns-- Crock met Hitler personally twice. Everything was in its proper place here, and orders were not to be questioned. A large pair of binoculars lay on the window ledge; the Bellahøj circus grounds were just opposite the office, and Sonja liked to keep up with things. On her desk were four telephones and the remainder of an Italian lunch, including a whole bottle of Brunello. He laid the four-centimeter-scale map and the CD in front of her, and explained the situation.
She turned the CD over in her hands.
"You never went for little girls," she said. "You went for grown-up women. So what can she do? Is it talent? Does it have something to do with money?"
* * *
It wasn't he who had left Sonja, and it wasn't she who had left him. They had known it simultaneously.
She'd had an apartment in Frederiksberg, on King George Road.
The last night he had been awakened about two o'clock in the morning by the city's atmosphere; it had felt like a blister on his brain and heart. He'd had to sit up and hum the arpeggio from BWV 4, "Christ Lay in the Bonds of Death." The Danish philosopher Martinus once said that to endure living in Frederiksberg he needed to pray constantly.
Sonja had already been awake. They were both in their early twenties. He hadn't had a word for it, but he had known, they both had known, that they were in the path of a storm it would be hard to ride out.
"We can't cope with it," she had said. "Soon I'll want to have children, and a dog, a female dog, and a fire in the fireplace, and will need to turn off the hearing aid and say the sound won't get better now."
He had gotten up and put on his clothes. She had followed him to the door; she moved in a free and easy manner, when she was naked, when she was clothed, through life as a whole.
"Since you believe in something," she had said, "can't you pray for help for us?"
"One can't pray for something," he had said. "At least not for different musical notes. One can only ask to play as well as possible the notes one is given."
It had been a dignified exit line and departure. He had gone out into the night with eyes dim with tears; it had felt like singing Wotan's farewell scene with Brynhild from Wagner's Ring. Then dawn came, and he had discovered that when there first is love, it does not go away when the sun comes up and the curtain goes down. It remains. Now twenty years had passed, and somehow both his happiness that she existed, and his sorrow that it couldn't be more, were not diminished.
* * *
He had laid his hands on the city map in front of him.
"I've always been searching for something," he said.
"Does she have it?"
He shook his head.
"She's nine years old. But she knows something. About where one can find it."
Sonja did not ask any more
She was a little older than he. A little taller, a little heavier. She had three children. A splendid husband, deep and vigorous and in C-major, like Mozart's last symphony. And besides the husband, lovers too.
Twenty years ago Sonja and Kasper had been lovers; they had not lost contact since then, and never would as long as they lived. SheAlmighty awards lifetime partners to some people. Brahms got Clara Schumann, Mozart got the clarinetist Anton Stadler as a lifelong partner in pin billiards. Maybe it has something to do with the thing called love.
Sonja's office resembled the Defense Command in Vedbæk, where Kasper had performed several times; the military love clowns-- Crock met Hitler personally twice. Everything was in its proper place here, and orders were not to be questioned. A large pair of binoculars lay on the window ledge; the Bellahøj circus grounds were just opposite the office, and Sonja liked to keep up with things. On her desk were four telephones and the remainder of an Italian lunch, including a whole bottle of Brunello. He laid the four-centimeter-scale map and the CD in front of her, and explained the situation.
She turned the CD over in her hands.
"You never went for little girls," she said. "You went for grown-up women. So what can she do? Is it talent? Does it have something to do with money?"
* * *
It wasn't he who had left Sonja, and it wasn't she who had left him. They had known it simultaneously.
She'd had an apartment in Frederiksberg, on King George Road.
The last night he had been awakened about two o'clock in the morning by the city's atmosphere; it had felt like a blister on his brain and heart. He'd had to sit up and hum the arpeggio from BWV 4, "Christ Lay in the Bonds of Death." The Danish philosopher Martinus once said that to endure living in Frederiksberg he needed to pray constantly.
Sonja had already been awake. They were both in their early twenties. He hadn't had a word for it, but he had known, they both had known, that they were in the path of a storm it would be hard to ride out.
"We can't cope with it," she had said. "Soon I'll want to have children, and a dog, a female dog, and a fire in the fireplace, and will need to turn off the hearing aid and say the sound won't get better now."
He had gotten up and put on his clothes. She had followed him to the door; she moved in a free and easy manner, when she was naked, when she was clothed, through life as a whole.
"Since you believe in something," she had said, "can't you pray for help for us?"
"One can't pray for something," he had said. "At least not for different musical notes. One can only ask to play as well as possible the notes one is given."
It had been a dignified exit line and departure. He had gone out into the night with eyes dim with tears; it had felt like singing Wotan's farewell scene with Brynhild from Wagner's Ring. Then dawn came, and he had discovered that when there first is love, it does not go away when the sun comes up and the curtain goes down. It remains. Now twenty years had passed, and somehow both his happiness that she existed, and his sorrow that it couldn't be more, were not diminished.
* * *
He had laid his hands on the city map in front of him.
"I've always been searching for something," he said.
"Does she have it?"
He shook his head.
"She's nine years old. But she knows something. About where one can find it."
Sonja did not ask any more
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