“Has anyone been through it today?” Tilte asks.
“Not a soul,” says Rickardt. “Apart from Henrik. You know, Black Henrik. He happened by. It turns out he’s involved in security. But he was only here to check.”
We drive up to the main entrance in Rickardt’s open Bentley, he himself at the wheel, and on the way I suddenly find myself asking Rickardt if he remembers Black Henrik’s surname from when they played together as children, and Rickardt replies that he most certainly does, because Henrik bears that most Danish of surnames, which is Borderrud. He must be able to sense our reaction, because he says how important it is not to judge Henrik, that he was always such a lovely boy, but fortune has not always been on his side. In fact, Rickardt recalls some terrifying stories about Henrik’s mother, and take today, for instance, when Henrik needed to check the tunnel, it was a wonder he stayed on his feet, and Henrik reckoned someone must have poured soft soap all over the floor.
At this point, Tilte asks him to pull over.
“Rickardt,” she says, “did you say soft soap?”
Rickardt confirms this information, adding that while it would be highly unlikely for someone to fill a four-hundred-meter-long tunnel with soft soap, the story might be illustrative of Henrik’s psychology, Henrik being a person easily led to believe that people are after him, and though Rickardt has never actually seen his horoscope, everything would seem to indicate that Henrik has Neptune on the ascendant and the moon in the twelfth house.
Although we’re in a hurry, Tilte and I get out of the car and stand beside each other in silence for a moment.
“That’s how Mother and Father were going to get the box away,” says Tilte. “They made a slide for it with soft soap.”
In order that you might gain a more complete understanding of the technical details involved here, I must reveal to you the nature of my family’s research into the spiritual benefits of soft soap, and in so doing relate the story of Karl Marauder’s conspiracy with Jakob Bordurio, an alliance for which I have found considerable difficulty forgiving Jakob, and even now I am uncertain as to whether such forgiveness actually has transpired. To this end, I must return to that Sunday afternoon over postchurch coffee in the kitchen of the rectory, when Count Rickardt Three Lions confided to us about the first time he smoked heroin.
Normally, we in the rectory do not encourage Rickardt to relate events of his happy youth, the reason being that it so easily gets him going, and before you know it his eyes are alight with enthusiasm and there’s no holding him back. But on this particular occasion we were unable to stop him before he had told us that the first time he smoked heroin was in the company of four good friends and pupils down at the harbor in Grenå, these four individuals to this day making up the core and the inner mandala of the Knights of the Blue Beam. Besides the heroin, they had equipped themselves with one hundred liters of diesel in fifteen-liter jerricans, a boombox, and Bach’s The Art of the Fugue, all of which had been described in detail to Rickardt in the form of a vision delivered to him by the little blue men, and then they found an empty ship’s container and smoked their heroin outside in the sun, took off all their clothes, poured the diesel onto the floor of the container, put Bach on the boom box, and for the next four hours, Rickardt told us, they were in Paradise, hurling themselves around in their lubricated environment, and it felt like they were weightless.
At that point we stopped him, but his story had already made an impression on me, particularly the part about feeling weightless. As it happened, we were fortunate enough at the time to have had a new floor put down in the parish community center, which as luck would have it was in the process of being treated with soap. So the following evening, I and my good friend Simon, whom Tilte calls Simon the Stylite, poured fifty liters of soft soap onto the new floorboards and took off all our clothes, and it turns out that a thick film of soap is just as good as diesel, offering no resistance at all if one takes a run-up and flings oneself onto the floor, this being easily sufficient to slide twenty meters as though upon a cushion of air, and we went on the whole night.
When we returned the next day, Karl Marauder and Jakob Bordurio had invited the pupils of Finø Town School’s classes six to nine to witness our experiment, and unbeknown to us they had all taken up position in the gallery. We lit candles and removed our clothes, and I recall taking a run-up and hurling myself along the floor on my back as I cried out Conny’s name, and Simon cried out Sonja’s, and the idea was that we should slide weightlessly and reach inside to the place at which the door begins to open. But as we slid along on our backs we looked up and saw fifty faces peering down at us, among them Sonja’s and Conny’s.
This is the kind of experience that throughout history has prompted individuals to renounce all hope of higher justice and to take matters into their own hands, and I must concede that the first thing Simon and I did afterward was to get our hands on a couple of lengths of lead piping and chase Jakob and Karl into the great woods, where they remained without daring to show themselves in any inhabited area for several days. Subsequently, however, kindness of heart prevailed, and Tilte spoke with me and gave me a go in the coffin, one of her alternative sessions whereby the lid stays off and she instead massages one’s feet and speaks of the importance of forgiveness if one is ever to proceed in one’s spiritual development.
Simon and I intended to go back and clean up after ourselves in the community center, anticipating both a kangaroo court and a firing squad, but my mother and father said we needn’t bother, because there were technical details of the soap treatment of wooden floors they wished to investigate, and when late one night I saw lights on in the community center and sneaked over there to take a look, I saw Mother and Father trying out the great soap slide, and they had brought with them two one-hundred-liter containers of soap, so their investigations must have been thorough indeed.
These recollections of past events, along with the fact that Mother’s and Father’s collected invoices included among them a bill for one ton of soft soap and a couple of pumps, are now collated by the shared perspicacity of Tilte and myself.
“Every night,” I say, “the displayed valuables are run down into the box. So Mother and Father were planning on waiting until nightfall. All they needed to do then was to sail up to the boathouse in their new fiberglass vessel and savor the sunset, and Mother would have had the remote control with her from the Grand Kite and Glider Day, and she would have pressed a button, and in some clever way that would have been as easy as pie for her she would have disconnected the box from the lift shaft. And with a thick film of soft soap on the floor, the box would have begun to slide, and it would have gone through the brick wall if Mother hadn’t also attached some device to the hidden door that made sure it opened like the one back home in the larder, and then the box would have come sliding all the way through the tunnel to the boathouse, where somehow they would have loaded it on board and sailed it away to some unknown destination where at some later stage they would have revealed it to the world along with a suitably concocted story and claimed their reward in accordance with section 15 of the Lost Property Act, Circular no. 76 of June 24, 2003.”
“And they would have gained themselves a great deal of attention,” says Tilte. “It would have been just like a little miracle. It would have brought them into the big league.”
We walk a little, immersed in bleak musings as to how wrong it all could have gone.
“It makes sense,” I say. “In its own frightening way. But there’s still one question that needs an answer. How come the tunnel’s full of soap now?”
Tilte stares at me with wide-open eyes. The answer appears to us at once.
“They’re going ahead with the plan,” says Tilte. “They think there’s still a chance. They’re the heroes now the floaters have been uncovered. They stand to pocket a huge reward. And no one has found out about their little idea. So they say to themselves: Why make do with a reward when we can double up? Why pidd
le around with a hundred million when we can have two? So tonight, when Filthøj Castle closes and the lights go out, they’ll sail out in their gondola and press the button on the remote and pull off the job as first planned.”
Obviously, with parents such as ours, Tilte and I share a long history of episodes involving neglect. Nonetheless, this ranks right up there alongside the most shocking examples. In fact, the only other incident I am able to recall offhand that even comes close was when Tilte and I had been allowed to go to Århus on our own for the first time and we called home from a phone box on the main pedestrian street. The lady who was going to perform the piercings we had spontaneously decided we wanted said she would need the consent of our parents, and when Father answered the phone he told us he wasn’t convinced it was a good idea, but that he would have a word with Mother. On that occasion, Tilte and I very nearly turned ourselves in to Bodil Hippopotamus at the Town Hall in Grenå with a request for the authorities to remove us from our home, but at the last minute Father called back and said it was fine by them. The sense of parental failure that time in Århus was immense, but this is worse. And no one’s calling back this time. Climbing into the car, I’d say we were weighed down.
63
It would be feeble to say that Filthøj Castle is guarded. The palace of Sleeping Beauty in its heyday would have been an open invitation compared to this. The lake is buzzing with police motorboats, a wire fence has been erected along its length, and the whole area is jumping with dogs, helicopters, and armed police, as well as all those who are more inconspicuously clad. A security point has been set up on the causeway that leads across the lake and into the castle, and there’s a Portakabin for the security guards.
“We’ll never get in,” says Tilte.
But then I take a folded piece of paper from my pocket.
“These are identification numbers,” I say. “I borrowed them from Anaflabia and Thorkild Thorlacius.”
They all stare at me.
“Petrus,” says Tilte, “I have to say that you’ve come on no end these past couple of days, though exactly where you’re heading is perhaps rather more unclear to me.”
We drive up to the barrier. Tilte quotes our ID numbers.
Documents are studied. And then a voice says, “You don’t look like your photos.”
Normally, it would be marvelous to hear such a friendly and familiar voice from back home. But under the present circumstances it’s hard to feel pleased at all. The voice belongs to Finn Flatfoot.
The explanation is a simple one. Whenever the Danish police have a major task on hand, the finest officers in the land are summoned together. And who finer to head up the team guarding the main entrance to the Grand Synod than Finn Metro Poltrop and his police dog Titmouse, whose characteristic wheezing, like an electric fan blowing through a doormat, comes through loud and clear to me now.
“We’re so fortunate, Finn,” says Tilte, “as to become more beautiful by the day. The photographers can’t keep up. No sooner is our picture taken than we look ten years younger.”
She’s turned on the charm, which includes a smile they could broadcast in harsh winters to keep the shipping routes free of ice.
But Finn isn’t thawing.
“Tilte,” he says. “And Peter and Hans. What are you doing here?”
It’s a question that could take a while to answer, and we haven’t the time.
And then Rickardt surprisingly enters the field.
“I am Rickardt Three Lions,” he announces. “Owner of this seat and cohost of this conference. These people are my guests!”
This is a side of Count Rickardt never before revealed to any resident of Finø. It is the part of him that was born with a servant at each finger and peasants to take care of the hard graft.
The hard graft in this instance is to raise the barrier, and Finn Flatfoot is about to, when all of a sudden he pauses.
“But I just let you in,” he says, “with the countess.”
Finn turns a monitor in our direction and indicates a camera above the gate.
“We take pictures in case we need to check.”
The man on the screen certainly has Rickardt’s dark mane. But whereas Rickardt is slim to the point of emaciation, this man is more muscular. Moreover, he sports a mustache, a facial accoutrement worn by only a minority of Danes, which to our considerable regret is all too familiar to me and Hans and Tilte. The long, blond hair of the countess at his side is plaited in the way of an Alpine dairy maid.
“Well, I never diddle,” says Count Rickardt. “It’s the pastor from Finø! And his wife!”
And then he presents the ultimate proof of him being in complete command of his surroundings.
“It’s your parents! They must have forgotten to return my ID card.”
Tilte takes hold of Rickardt and pulls him toward her.
“You mean you’ve seen Mother and Father?” she says in a quiet voice.
“They came down to the boathouse. To check the tunnel. Surely you know your mother’s in charge of the alarm systems?”
We all fall silent. Our difficulties are mounting. Finn Flatfoot won’t let us in. And Mother and Father have slipped past him, perhaps even Black Henrik, too.
By her own standards, Tilte was rather subdued on the boat trip to Filthøj. I sense that she is considering the future of Jakob Bordurio. But now she leans forward to the open window of the car.
“Finn,” she says, “wouldn’t you say that guarding the main entrance here was a job of utmost responsibility? And that if you fulfil that responsibility satisfactorily, they shall be obliged to honor you with a medal?”
Her voice is sweet as filled chocolates.
“I believe something like that has been mentioned, yes,” says Finn.
“The Order of Merit, for instance,” says Tilte. “That would indeed look splendid on that suit of yours with the large check pattern. The one you wear in church. But do you know what, Finn? If they find out you let Mother and Father in with false IDs, you won’t only be saying goodbye to the Order of Merit. Most likely you’ll be given the sack or moved to Anholt. Perhaps even to Læsø.”
Silence once more.
“What you can do,” says Tilte, “is to let us in so we can find Mother and Father and get them out again as quickly as possible. Before they’re discovered.”
The barrier goes up.
64
As we drive slowly across the causeway I turn my head back, and what I see behind us both surprises and concerns me.
It’s a taxi. Not in itself an alarming sight, but it’s hurtling along as though its passengers have forced the driver to ignore all the rules of the road and put his license on the line. Now it screeches to a halt in front of the barrier and out of it pile Anaflabia Borderrud, Thorkild Thorlacius, Alexander Flounderblood, and Bodil Hippopotamus.
They move in a way that from a distance looks like trance dancing but most probably is an expression of rage, and now they stand pointing in our direction.
By now, Tilte and I are convinced that the basis of all spiritual training lies in the ability of the human heart to empathize and understand the feelings of others. I can easily imagine how the six individuals behind us are feeling—I say six, assuming that Vera and Thorkild’s wife, too, are about to emerge from the vehicle—in view of the suffering they have endured during the last twenty-four hours. And I would very much have liked to tell them that one’s chances of discovering that the door is opening may be enhanced by training one’s inner balance and neutrality and one’s ability to let go of such powerful emotions as those that now compel them to dance about in front of the barrier. But I am out of earshot, and I can see that they are now surrounded by police, and it would seem, moreover, that the officers in question are acting in full accordance with modern security philosophy, which states that it’s better to be a conflict solver than to come across as an officer of the law, and as such they are now attempting to talk things down and reach agreement. And yet Anafl
abia knocks one of them to the ground with her umbrella, and I see another officer slump to his knees, possibly due to Thorkild Thorlacius having delivered a right hook to his abdomen. And then more widespread scuffling breaks out. The last thing I see before we cross the bridge and enter the courtyard is Alexander Flounderblood breaking loose in a magnificent escape attempt, throwing himself into the lake and proceeding to swim away.
And then we drive through a gateway into the courtyard.
It’s always a moving experience to see the surroundings in which one’s closest friends—in this instance Count Rickardt—spent their childhoods and smoked their first joints. And I must say that Filthøj is a proper castle of the kind fit for kings and queens. The courtyard is the size of a football pitch and the buildings as big as handball arenas, though with gilded elements, inscriptions, and ornaments, and the steps into the main house would be wide enough for fifty guests to proceed to the main door with everyone holding hands.
On the steps is another security point, and we’re happy and relieved to discover that it’s manned by Lars and Katinka of the Police Intelligence Service.
The reason we feel happy is that their presence at this strategic point means that Black Henrik can’t possibly have slipped by. For while it may be conceivable for him to have passed Titmouse and Finn Flatfoot without being noticed, it’s quite unimaginable that he could ever pull the wool over the eyes of Lars and Katinka. At this moment, Polly and her white ladies are going through in the company of four police officers carrying the coffin of Maria from Maribo, and the way Lars and Katinka study their documents it’s plain that nothing is left to chance.
The question now is how we ourselves are going to get in, it being fairly reasonable to assume that Lars and Katinka might feel that things have happened between us in the last twenty-four hours that require explanation.