The Elephant Keepers' Children (47 page)

“I'm devastated,” I tell them. “By the two of you once again having a hand in it all. But I appreciate your honesty.”

The room falls silent. The Grand Synod is about to begin. So many people gathered, dancing in and out of the door as if it were an open gate. Conny takes my hand. I look around at the people in my presence, at Hans and Ashanti, Tilte and Conny. And at Pallas Athene, who thankfully is seated,
because a moment ago I saw Tilte say something to her that clearly swept her legs from under her.

Perhaps it's the mood in this great space. But all of a sudden I see the elephants that reside inside them all.

Beautiful animals, each and every one, though difficult to keep. Requiring much care and attention. Not to mention the amount of food they eat.

I feel the joy of knowing them all. And gratitude for being only a boy of fourteen without an elephant of his own, but with legs made for football and a natural, albeit somewhat inflated, tendency to modesty. Not forgetting a small fox terrier. I stroke Basker's fur.

“Basker,” I whisper, “can you feel the door?”

We have never returned to Finø
.

It may be that we've returned technically to the island, living here, and eating and sleeping at the rectory. But we have never returned home.

It has to do with what I was talking about before, about how when you change inside, those around you change, too, and vice versa.

When we came back from Copenhagen we were no longer the same. And the island to which we returned was no longer the island we knew.

I shall begin with the most obvious changes. The ones you can see with the naked eye.

Alexander Flounderblood has left the island, having taken on a more prominent position abroad, and Einar Flogginfellow has been reinstated as head of Finø Town School, though initially for a trial period only.

The whole school followed Alexander down to the ferry to see him off. And it wasn't to deliver him the final coup de grâce that might relieve him of his suffering; it was to wish him a proper goodbye. For Alexander, too, was changed. Following the events I have related to you here, he was never the
same again. The last three months of his time at the school he spoke to the pupils as though they were human beings, and often one would find he had begun to daydream, standing at the window and gazing out upon the Sea of Opportunity as though scanning for something he had once glimpsed but that now was gone, something he could never forget.

Moreover, he had brought Vera back with him. She was standing by his side with one foot on the gangway when he caught sight of Tilte and me and came up to shake our hands. It was like there was something he wanted to tell us but never got the chance, because Vera called out to him and he turned and we waved, and then he was gone.

Tilte doesn't live at the rectory anymore
. In August she moved to Grenå to begin life as a boarder at Grenå High School, which Jakob Bordurio now also attends, and to begin with they lived in student accommodation at the Grenå Kollegium.

But not for long. Only for a month or so. After that, they moved into a swish apartment overlooking the beach.

Reliable sources inform me that it's paid for by Tilte's collaboration with Pallas Athene.

Pallas Athene came to Finø in the summer. Though we are accustomed to the finest vehicles—horse-drawn carriages and golf buggies and Mercedes Benzes and Maseratis and Bermuda's armored wagon—members of the Finø public still paused to stare when the red Jaguar pulled up in front of the
rectory and Pallas Athene climbed out in stilettos and a red wig, though thankfully without her helmet.

When she and Tilte withdrew to Tilte's room, I thought at first that I was meant to go with them, Tilte and I having always stuck together through thick and thin. But this time she shook her head, though I could tell that Pallas Athene was surprised, too, seeing as how I was the one who discovered her.

“In Peter's presence,” Tilte said, as though speaking of a person absent, “one sees the world conjugated in a multitude of ways. Yet there's no getting away from the fact that he only just turned fifteen in May.”

And then they closeted themselves away to speak in private.

When they emerged, Pallas Athene looked like a person who is fatally wounded just as the sun comes up. She bid us goodbye rather incoherently, climbed back into her Jaguar and drove away.

I stood at the kitchen window and watched her go. Tilte came up behind me. She put her arms around me, but Peter Finø is not for sale, at least not for false displays of affection. I kept my shoulders straight and remained unapproachable.

“That thing she does, putting her heart away in that box,” said Tilte. “It's no good. Even if it's together with a photo of the kids. I explained it to her.”

Tilte's voice was full of what the Christian mystics call repentance and the desire to placate me. So I condescended to reply. One should never turn a repentant sinner away.

“You want to reschool her,” I said. “Turn her into a therapist.”

Tilte remained silent. She didn't need to speak. It was obvious I'd hit bull's-eye.

“We've sold that once already,” I said. “To Leonora.”

“This'll be the next stage up,” said Tilte.

“You want her to get her clients to bring their partners with them. To Abakosh. Where she and Andrik will give them therapy.”

Tilte leaned her head against mine.

“I gave her a couple of sound bites to be getting on with,” she said. “The two main principles of love. One: always take your husband with you when visiting a brothel. And two: leave your heart where nature put it.”

Tilte has been back only twice
since she moved away, and the first time was when we had Svend Sewerman admitted into the aristocracy. Tilte had received a letter from the Palace with a coat of arms on the back, and one from the Association of the Danish Nobility, and together we cycled across to Finøholm. There, we sat in the kitchen with Svend and Bullimilla, and the first thing we did was to give them back their curtains. We had washed and ironed them and folded them neatly. When you're involved with profound personal development, it's important, as far as possible, to return the material world in the state in which you found it. Then Tilte placed the letter from the palace on the table with the coat of arms facing upward.

“Peter and I,” she said, “are protectors of Finø Football Club. I should like to mention in passing that the club is in
desperate need of a new indoor facility, the old one being rather run-down and overbooked.”

Svend Sewerman moistened his lips. And I have to concede that I didn't know quite where to look either, so I chose to stare at the floor in embarrassment.

Then Svend asked what a new indoor facility would cost. His voice was dry, and Tilte replied that the going rate was upward of six million. Whereupon Bullimilla inquired if the six million included a cafeteria, and Tilte said no, that was just for the basics.

“Svend,” said Bullimilla, “we need a cafeteria. Think of all the growing youngsters in need of sustenance, and a kitchen's the heart of any building, so don't make this one too small, will you?”

“For seven million,” Tilte said, “we can do you something that'll last for generations to come.”

Then she placed a document on the table in front of Svend. Mustering all my willpower, I lifted my gaze from the floor. The document was a deed of gift from Svend Sewerman to Finø Football Club. Tilte had drawn it up at home in accordance with all the conventions. It was for the sum of seven million kroner.

When Svend signed it with a look on his face that suggested giving money away ran against his deepest convictions, Tilte opened the letter from the queen and the one from the Association of the Danish Nobility, both of which confirmed that subsequent to studies of church records as presented by the Parish of Finø Town, the association found it proved
without doubt that Svend Sewerman was a direct descendant of the Ahlefeldt-Laurvig Finø family and as such was entitled to bear that family's name, and congratulations were in order, and the queen had signed it all herself.

Svend fainted. This is the only time I have ever seen a grown man faint. His eyes turned to the sky and he slid slowly to the floor.

Tilte and I did nothing, mostly because we didn't think there was anything we could do. Svend Sewerman is shaped like a barrel and, like I said, used to work digging holes in the ground. He is not a man that can be moved easily without the aid of a trolley. Bullimilla, however, drew him up in her arms as if he were a child. Then she stood there for a moment, holding him upright while looking at Tilte and me.

“When we open the new facility,” she said, “you can leave the food to me.”

That was the first time
Tilte came back.

The wording is intentional. Before the Grand Synod and Mother's and Father's disappearance, I would have said that Tilte had not been home. But I no longer refer to the rectory or Finø as home.

It has to do with the rectory's unexpected guest.

I'll say this slowly, because it's important: Tilte moving out was a greater shock to me than I had anticipated.

I don't know if there are clinics like Big Hill where you can be treated for sister dependency. But that was certainly
what I needed. We had returned home from Copenhagen, and Tilte and I insisted on each of us having our own Portakabin in the rectory garden, and that was where we were going to live. We were given what we wanted without delay. That's one of the differences between then and now: since we came back there have been a number of occasions when we have needed to explain to Mother and Father how things are going to be, and now they do as we say.

It's all so as not to be trampled to death by the elephants. We realize that. Mother's and Father's elephants are not the Indian variety that can be taught to sit on your lap and do the crossword puzzle and stand on their front legs and wag their tails. Mother's and Father's elephants are the African species that wander great distances without warning and that you can be on reasonable terms with but never be certain of. So that was the reason we wanted to live in Portakabins, so as to keep our distance should they begin to wander.

I must have imagined things would continue like that, with Tilte and me in our own separate Portakabins in the garden, but close to each other nonetheless. Even though I'd known for years that she would leave one day. So when it happened, it was worse than I ever thought it would be.

I found out what loneliness is really like.

I'm sorry to have to mention something as somber as this, now that we're approaching the end. But it's important.

Of course, I had been familiar with loneliness for a long time, perhaps even always. It feels like it's been with me as far back as I can remember.

I don't know how it feels to you. Perhaps we all experience loneliness differently, in our own ways. My mother once told me that for her loneliness is “Monday in the Rain” playing in the background when she feels like she's all on her own, even though that song also has to do with love and Father. To me, loneliness is a person. It has no face, but when it appears it's as if it comes to sit down beside me, or behind me, and it can happen any time, even when I'm with others, and even when I'm with Conny.

I'm seeing Conny again. Sometimes I visit her in Copenhagen, where her friends stare at me as if I were a puzzle that cannot be solved, and the puzzle is what on earth Conny sees in me. Sometimes she comes to Finø. Very often, being together with her makes me feel extremely happy.

I don't know if you're in love with someone. If you're not, there's something I would like to say to you, and that is that love comes to everyone. All fifteen years of my experience in life tell me that the world is organized in such a way that all of us find someone to love. Unless we work against it. So if you're not in love with anyone but would like to be, you should try to discover which part of you is working against it. And this is founded on in-depth studies conducted by myself and Tilte.

But even with Conny here, loneliness sometimes appeared and sat down behind me, more conspicuous than ever before, and I couldn't understand why. Until one evening in the rectory kitchen.

It was October, the half-term holiday, and Great-Grandma had come to stay with us. Tilte was here, too, and she had
brought Jakob Bordurio with her. Hans and Ashanti had come from Copenhagen. They live together now in a small flat, blessed with their love, as the hymn makers might say, and not even the neighbors are any bother, even though Ashanti beats the drums and trance dances and occasionally carries out the ritual slaughter of a black rooster on the balcony.

Conny was sitting beside me and Father had just presented his roasted whole turbot on a flatbed trolley when Ashanti said, “I'm pregnant. Hans and I are expecting a baby.”