The Stages: A Novel Read online

  As the priest scatters the third and final shovelful of dirt and repeats the sad, true words, Carsten Rasmussen stands up, places his coat on his seat, and walks slowly toward the casket. His grandmother and uncles watch him cautiously. Several people steal glances at each other. Here and there whispers rise, and a general sense of concern and helplessness grips us all. We were not expecting this. We do not know what is about to happen. And with Carsten, it could be anything.

  It’s not until he has set down the pail and shovel that Jesper Olsen turns and sees Carsten standing before him. The priest shows no surprise. He merely leans an ear towards the young man’s mouth and nods his head while the other speaks words the rest of us can’t hear. After a few seconds, Jesper places his hand on Carsten’s shoulder and squeezes it lightly.

  “Mette’s son will now speak a few words,” he says.

  The priest steps off to the side, leaving Carsten alone beside the casket. Everyone looks at him, waiting for what he will say. His grandmother has removed the handkerchief from her nose and now holds it on her lap, folding it into a smaller and smaller square. One of his uncles, I notice, sits on the edge of his chair with one foot in front of the other, a position from which he could quickly spring and subdue his nephew if the situation proves necessary. I actually take comfort from the fact that this uncle is a large and athletic man, and against him Carsten would not stand a chance.

  “I hadn’t planned on speaking today,” Carsten says.

  He stands with his arms hanging loose at his sides and stares down at the floor. He looks like a little boy called out in front of the adults for some crime he committed, and is already sorry for, and is too shy to speak about. But everyone in this room knows Carsten Rasmussen. We all know his reputation for the exact opposite of shyness. Although he’s passed his twenty-first birthday and presumably left his years of teenage rebellion behind him, Carsten is remembered throughout this city for childish acts splashed across newspaper headlines. There was the time he shot fireworks off the deck of his parents’ yacht and a stray missile ignited a fire on the thatched roof of a cottage north of the city. There was the party he attended with members of a motorcycle gang, and though the investigation showed that Carsten had acquired the high-quality drugs himself and generously distributed them to his new friends, he was found alone and badly beaten inside a graffiti-sprayed warehouse in Nørrebro, tied to a table and wearing nothing but his underwear. For a time there were so many news stories about him and his rich-kid escapades that the standard expression among parents wanting to curb their children’s unruliness was, “Now don’t you go pulling a Carsten on me.” For Mette’s sake, I pray that he hasn’t saved one final embarrassing moment for now. When I look over at Carsten’s uncle, I can see that he is concerned, too. He grips the sides of his chair as if he were just about to launch himself out of it.

  “My mom,” says Carsten. “What can I say that the priest hasn’t already? She was a trusting person. She trusted me, even when I lied to her. Which happened sometimes. And she trusted the people she worked with at the Center. She was always telling me how she could count on her staff.”

  Carsten lifts his head and takes a step closer to the choir, the scolded child already growing bold. He glances across the group before him and smiles.

  “It’s funny. Maybe ironic is the word. Ever since I was a kid, she wanted me to be more careful about the company I kept. Like I should hang around with people at the Center. But I wanted to have fun, not spend my evenings talking about Søren Kierkegaard! She was sure I’d end up getting myself killed. But now look what’s happened to her.”

  Carsten glances over at the casket, then turns and holds us with his gaze. It can’t be more than a second or two, but time seems suspended and I feel the way I do when I sense that someone is about to disobey a crossing light and step off the curb, possibly into the path of a bicycle or car.

  “She got herself killed,” he says flatly. “Murdered.”

  The well-dressed, respectable people seated in the choir look down at their laps or shake their heads in disbelief. Murmurs of disapproval echo overhead. We are all thinking the same thing: Oh Carsten, not again. To my relief, his uncle stands up from his chair.

  “It’s okay, Carsten,” he says. “We know. We all know.”

  He nods toward an empty chair, inviting Carsten to sit back down. But Carsten doesn’t budge.

  “Can a son not speak at his mother’s funeral? I’m not finished yet. I was going to say something else. Something you don’t know, Uncle. I spoke with the Police this morning, and they told me their investigation, their entire investigation, has been wrong from the beginning.”

  The uncle’s reply is hardly more than a whisper. If it weren’t for the church’s acoustics, I wouldn’t hear him.

  “Please, Carsten. I know you’re upset. Not now.”

  “And make all these people wait to read about it in the newspapers? But these are my mother’s closest and most trusted friends. They deserve to be the first to know. This morning, as I was beginning to say, the Police informed me that the new Kierkegaard manuscript has been stolen.”

  Somewhere, someone in the crowd gasps. The two people immediately beside me exchange glances.

  “It makes me wonder,” Carsten says, “if the person who murdered her might also have stolen the manuscript. And maybe that person was not a stranger to my mother. It may have been someone who worked with her. Someone she trusted. Maybe someone here at her funeral, right now, pretending to be mourning her death. As her son—and this is the last thing I’ll say, Uncle, so you can go ahead and sit down now—I promise we’ll find that person, whoever it is.”

  Carsten makes his way back to his seat, and except for the sound of his footsteps on the stone floor the church is completely silent. No one seems to know what to do next. For a moment I wonder if the funeral is permanently stalled, but finally Jesper Olsen steps away from the far railing and walks up to Carsten. After shaking hands with him and speaking some private words, the priest instructs the pallbearers to take their positions. I stuff my hat and gloves into my pockets and join the others around the casket. As I bend down to grasp a brass handle, the organ plays “Hvo ved hvornår mit liv har ende,” “Who Knows When My Life Will End,” the same hymn that was sung at Kierkegaard’s funeral one hundred and fifty seven years ago. Rising in sync with the five others, I lift the weight of Mette Rasmussen’s body, her wooden casket, the sprays of white flowers, the three small shovelfuls of dirt, and walk slowly down the center aisle of Our Lady’s Church. I concentrate on placing my feet properly—to trip now would be an awful thing. We pass through the front doors and carefully manage the stairs, sidestepping down them. A hearse is parked at the curb. We slide the casket into the back of it and step away. A driver in a black suit (but no overcoat) closes the door.

  On the porch of the church, on the steps, and on the sidewalk below, a crowd has formed, just as it had less than an hour earlier. This time they train their eyes away from the building, and I watch with them as the hearse pulls out onto the road. That black car with tinted windows is headed not for a cemetery but for the crematorium, where the casket with the body inside it will be lowered into a furnace. In a week, perhaps two, the remains will be returned in an urn. I assume that Carsten will have it buried in the Assistens Cemetery, beside his father’s, not very far from the spot where Søren Kierkegaard is buried. There will be a small service, but I don’t know if I will be invited, or if I am whether I’ll go. If Mette hadn’t listed my name as one of the pallbearers, I might not have come to her funeral. Her mother and brothers, I know, are not very fond of me.

  The crowd begins to disperse, one stream heading around the corner toward the university and another stream walking in the direction of Nytorv Square. A few others linger, holding handkerchiefs to their faces or embracing friends. Several people have taken out their cell phones, with which they’re probably checking on Carsten’s story. I’m curious too, but I can wait. There wi
ll be a newspaper stand on the way back to my apartment, and when I return to work tomorrow everyone will be talking about what really happened to our former director, where the manuscript has gone, and what we’re all to do about it.

  Chapter Two

  ***

  They’re tearing holes into Copenhagen—holes and troughs and tunnels. On the other side of wooden barricades, jackhammers break up slabs of pavement and front loaders rumble through the demolition scooping up jagged hunks of what used to be road or sidewalk. The worst of the construction zones is right in the middle of my daily walk to work, and I can barely stand the barrage of noises. Jut-jut-jut-jut. Beep-beep-beep-beep. I understand why they’re doing it: it’s all part of a well-thought-out plan to extend the metro and beautify the area around Town Hall Square, but I can’t keep myself from growing angry. I am more sensitive to loud noises than most people. Even knowing why I’m so sensitive to auditory stimulus doesn’t keep me from wanting to scream. The only thing that helps is following a practice Mette taught me. It’s called “re-focussing,” and I don’t think I could make it between my apartment and the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center without its help.

  When I feel disturbed, as I certainly feel now, I switch my sensory attention. Forget the sounds, I tell myself. Focus on what you see. It’s like closing one door and opening another. I still hear the jackhammers and earthmover machines, but gradually a new world of awareness dawns over me. How much more pleasant to watch people passing down Vester Voldgade on bicycles! At 8:00 a.m. it’s still more dark out than light, and the cyclists have white headlights on their handlebars and flashing red reflector lights on their rear wheels. Some of the bikes are mounted with a child seat on the back; others have a one-wheeled wooden cart extending ahead of the front tire. It’s all very Danish: a safe, simple, and functional solution to a daily problem. The parents are headed to work, but first they must drop off their children in day care—but why crowd the roads with more cars when you can achieve your purpose by biking, and get your exercise at the same time? The scene is also beautiful, at times touching. Seeing a toddler bundled up in a snowsuit and red scarf, wearing a knit hat and gloves, her sleepy head lolling off to one side, looking actually bored while her mother sits in the saddle with perfect posture and pumps the pedals in a steady up-and-down rhythm—how can I not relax, too? With somewhat greater calm, I make my way from sidewalk to sidewalk along my route to work. I enjoy the cool wind on my face. I smile at the cyclists at they pass by.

  As I said, I have Mette to thank for teaching me this technique. She read about it an article written to help people cope with Asperger’s, a condition I didn’t even know I had until six years ago, when I was already thirty-seven. According to Mette and the wealth of medical literature she shared with me, I’ve always had Asperger’s; or, to put it another way, I’ve always been a person with Asperger’s. The language here is tricky because Asperger’s isn’t a disease—it’s not something you come down with and possibly die from. It’s something you live with and die with. I’d always known I was different. People called me weird, anti-social, or (my personal favorite) a genius. I won the state spelling bee four years in a row (a record still unbroken), got a full ride to State College, scored 100% on the verbal section of the GRE, won a graduate school fellowship, and now find myself employed at an acclaimed international research center. Not exactly the life story of someone who, back in the ‘70s, would have been called a “retard.” But as Mette once told me, “You can be a genius and still have Asperger’s. It affects your social and emotional awareness, not your IQ.” Albert Einstein had Asperger’s, or at least some experts believe. I don’t mind being in his company. Although, truthfully, I’d prefer to be alone. If he was like me, he’d have felt the same way.

  As I make the turn off of Vester Voldgade and onto Farvergade, the street where the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center is located, I find myself wondering whether Mette would forgive me for not grieving over her death. I know that I should, and at her funeral I certainly saw people grieving, so I understand how it’s done, but try as I might I have not been able to feel what they appear to feel—something so deep their limbs go limp, their faces contort, they cry or whimper until someone holds their hand or gives them a hug. But grief just isn’t on my emotional spectrum. Mette would understand. She’d say, “Daniel, it’s okay.” How many times has she told me that! But, honestly, I don’t want it to be okay. I don’t want the only person I’ve ever loved to die, then not mourn for her. I don’t want to be a person who doesn’t grieve. I just don’t know how to.

  With this cheery thought in mind, I step off the sidewalk and pass through a stone archway. The passageway takes me into “Vartov,” a complex of buildings arranged in a rectangle and sharing a cobbled-brick courtyard in the center. As on any weekday, a few cars are parked along the edge of the buildings and ranks of bikes stand with their front tires pressed inside metal bars bolted to walls; scores of other bikes lean against the walls, under windowsills, to the side of doorways, next to staircases, or wherever else space can be found. I tried riding a bike for a while myself, but I’m just too clumsy. In some of the literature Mette shared with me, poor motor skills is correlated to Asperger’s Syndrome. It explains why I hated gym more than any other class at school and why, even now, I find myself tripping and falling down more often than any self-respecting middle-aged man should.

  When I come to the door of my building, I take out a round metal key and wave it under a sensor. The door lock clicks open and I walk inside. The Center occupies the first floor of what was, in Kierkegaard’s time, a hospital, but with modern renovations it now makes for perfect business space. What to do with all those old hospital rooms? Turn them into offices, naturally. Where beds and chamber pots once sat and patients recovered or died from tuberculosis, the rooms now have desks and computers, shelves of books, and here the scholars sit understanding their subject matter in original ways or dying from lack of insight. As I walk down the narrow hallway with its walls painted cream-white and the tall doors painted light blue, passing one office after another, I imagine nurses and doctors shuffling these same corridors, carrying vials of medicine, trying to put on a happy face for the patients they will see. I don my own mask, my work persona: Daniel Peters, American translator of the new, complete edition of Søren Kierkegaard’s writings. I love my work here, and to be honest I’ve missed it more than I’ve missed Mette. I know that’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s true. Grief I cannot summon; attachment to a set routine, however, comes naturally. Forgive me, Mette.

  As I enter the meeting room, I find three colleagues sitting together at the long conference table: Anders, the Center’s secretary; Lona, the senior philologist; and Rebekah, an American post-doctoral student who grew up in Indiana but got her terminal degree from Princeton’s School of Divinity. They drink coffee from white porcelain cups and enjoy the pastries that Anders brought from Lagkagehuset—I know Anders brought them because Tuesday is his day. Mine is Thursday.

  There was a time, not very long ago, when I wouldn’t sit with the others unless forced to do so for mandatory meetings. Instead I would simply disappear into my office as soon as I arrived, work all day and afternoon, then leave without so much as bidding my colleagues good morning or good night. But social interaction is one of the areas I have improved since my diagnosis. Mette and I worked out a program together. Little by little I have increased the length of time when I voluntarily socialize. Lately, I have managed to make polite company in unstructured settings for up to fifteen minutes. But it’s not easy. Having fresh pastries on hand serves as an important incentive. Anders is sitting with his back to me, so I reach over his shoulders and snatch two pastries, one with each hand, then walk to a chair at the other end of the table. The two women smile. One of them offers me a plate, but I shake my head.

  The others are speaking in English, out of deference to Rebekah, who’s trying to learn conversational Danish but isn’t quite there yet. I wish
her luck. I’ve lived in Denmark for nearly twenty years (from 1985 to 1986, then from 1994 until now) and still my spoken Danish is unintelligible to all but a few Danes—those being the ones who taught me the language in the first place. In order to understand me, they must do some complicated form of translation in their heads, taking in what I say, remembering my mispronunciations from the past, matching my Danish to standard Danish, and quickly decoding my message so that they can have something to say in response. The segment of the world population that understands “Daniel Danish” (the name that one of Mette’s brothers gave my language many years ago, claiming not to speak that foreign tongue himself) has of course dwindled of late. With Mette’s death, I now have three people with whom I can reliably speak Danish. Naturally, if a shopkeeper doesn’t speak English and all I need is an open-faced sandwich to go or something simple like that, I can make myself understood. But living in Copenhagen, where just about everyone speaks English, I seldom have to speak like a native, much to my relief and that of others.