The Seventh Child (56 page)

In December 1973, the American space probe
Pioneer 10
passed the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter, carrying humankind’s message out into the universe.

“It was Carl Sagan’s idea,” Asger said at the dinner table in the house in Højbjerg.

His parents nodded. To avoid making eye contact with each other, they looked away.

Asger’s long hospital stay apparently hadn’t significantly changed anything—but he was no longer alone in his interest in the universe. He had a new friend, Ejnar, who lived at the Ole Rømer Observatory, which was located on a small, grassy berm at the end of Asger’s street. Ejnar’s mother had died during labor, and his father, the director of the observatory, had, for the sake of science, married one of his students, who could then care for his son while he examined the stars. The western half of the grounds was dominated by two Cassegrain reflector telescopes, and during the day, the two cupolas resembled a pair of shining silver helmets a giant had left behind under the blue sky.

Asger’s friend was a descendent—not directly but still—of the astronomer Peder Horrebow, who had studied astronomy with Ole Rømer himself and who, according to the know-it-all Ejnar, had feuded with playwright Ludvig Holberg, no less, about an old debt. Out of sheer irritation, Holberg had stuffed his play
Erasmus Montanus
with astronomical allusions to Horrebow’s enthusiasm for Copernicus’s Heliocentric Theory—which in Holberg’s version simply became a question of whether the earth is round or flat. Ejnar sniffled contemptuously at this demonstration of art’s banality.

As Fate would have it, it was his father’s scientific mistake that had such a terrible impact on Ejnar’s own short life. Like so many scientists, Ejnar’s father adored the British astronomer Fred Hoyle, who had placed outer space in sublime, static equilibrium by suggesting that the universe existed in a steady state, with neither beginning nor end. It led Hoyle and his disciples to the inevitable conclusion that the Big Bang—which according to rival scientists was the start of everything—was nothing but hot air. The turning point came when two American researchers discovered the sound of the universe’s birth, and with that, the evidence that it wasn’t static and never had been. The way I see it, that was the beginning of the end for Ejnar and his father, and indirectly for Asger.

In the years that followed that disappointing discovery, Ejnar’s father sat hunched in stubbornness under the cupolas, scowling into the darkness in the hope that a new momentous answer would burst out of nothingness, saving him and Hoyle by recasting the question to one of eternal constancy. During those years, Ejnar became his father’s most faithful disciple, and that was what really connected the two boys: how they continually circled around this topic, on which they disagreed vehemently.
Was there a beginning to the universe or not?

“It began with the Big Bang!” Asger said excitedly.

“No,” said Ejnar stubbornly. “The universe has always existed, and it’s in a steady state.”

Even for a neighborhood with streets named after stars, it was a remarkable discussion between two thirteen-year-olds, and their disagreement grew more vehement month by month.

“Do you believe in UFOs?” Asger asked one day, hoping to find a topic that might rescue their friendship from the abyss.

“If they’re here, they always were—but then, where are they?” Ejnar said, glancing about tentatively and offering the kind of matter-of-factness common to generations of astronomers.

“Maybe they only appear at night,” Asger suggested gamely.

Horrebow’s descendant gave his friend a skeptical look. First Asger defended a complicated scientific hypothesis that reduced the universe to a single point of origin, and the next minute he was fantasizing about aliens; but Ejnar possessed a longing and a love that Asger wouldn’t recognize until it was too late, and like Hoyle’s universe, Ejnar’s feelings were limitless, without beginning or end. So, to put an end to the alien question once and for all, the two boys—like the astronomer James Craig Watson, who one hundred years earlier had dug a deep trench in the ground to observe, in complete darkness, events in the sky as clearly as possible—dug a deep, pitch-black hole in the forest near Moesgaard Beach, a little south of the city. When it was done, together they climbed down a homemade rope ladder without noticing that Fate had climbed in with them.

“Scientists have always believed that pretty much all knowledge has been mapped out,” Asger said thoughtlessly to Ejnar their first night in the hole under the stars. “Like how your father and Hoyle believed in the steady state theory
…
it’s nothing new.”

Ejnar shifted in the darkness. “Are you saying my father is ignorant?”

“No, but he
believes
in something that’s ignorant
…
You don’t have to.”

Ejnar’s love for his father was immense, and Asger felt a strange anger roil in his chest.

“But what if he’s right?” Ejnar said.

“But he isn’t. He’s wrong. The universe is expanding because of the Big Bang. Just about everybody knows that by now,” Asger said dismissively.

A terrible, sad expression spread across Ejnar’s small oval face, but in the darkness of the hole, Asger didn’t notice, so he continued along this trajectory: “Your father simply dreams of turning back the clock
…
” He paused, and the words articulated themselves in the silence
…
to the time before you were born
.

And the painful truth of those words lingered between them. Before Ejnar’s birth, the universe had been in perfect balance wherever his professor father had looked: his theory was still valid, his wife remained by his side, and he felt a kind of freedom and a boldness that Ejnar’s appearance—coinciding with the new theory of the universe—had robbed him of.

“I don’t want to sit in this damn hole with you anymore,” Ejnar growled. And, a moment later, he crawled out and disappeared.

Scientific dissent can be articulated that simply in a funnel-shaped hole some twelve feet below the surface. From that day on they didn’t see each other. It is a peculiar fact that the strongest bonds can sometimes break from a series of even the lightest blows. The boys had zero chance of understanding the force that, time and time again, leads people to the point of no return. The hole in the forest fell into disrepair, and the alien spaceships—if they’d ever been there—opened their cosmic afterburners and disappeared.

After their quarrel, Asger was alone for months, and he grew ever more restless, as though his thoughts were occupied by something much larger and much more mysterious than the movement of galaxies in the sky. That was when his parents decided to take him to the orphanage on Zealand to see the place
he’d
come from, a visit that ultimately didn’t seem to make any impression on him.

Then one Saturday morning, when the dining room of his parents’ house was empty, he went to the phone in the windowsill and dialed the number
he’d
long kept on a piece of paper stuffed in his pocket.

“This is Inger Marie Ladegaard.”

The answer was muted but clear, as though the call had been expected.

“Hello
…
?” she said.

“This is Asger Dan Christoffersen,” he said.

“Yes
…
You were here with your father and mother. Your adoptive parents.”

“Yes, that was me.” He didn’t know what to say. Marie’s gentle voice made him shy. “I was just wondering
…
”

She breathed calmly but didn’t say anything.

He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “Don’t tell anyone
…
anyone at all. But I’d like to contact my real parents. I’d like to know where they live and what they do.”

“So soon.”

“Soon?”

“Yes. Most people don’t call them until they’ve reached their twenties or thirties.”

He heard her muted voice deliver the strange statement and didn’t know how to respond.

“Many adults have that urge,” she said by way of explanation.

He still didn’t reply.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

In the background, he heard someone shout her name.

“Give me your parents’ names and telephone number and I’ll call you back.”

He did so and then said his good-byes, already mentally preparing himself for a long wait, but the phone rang just an hour later.

“Hi. I just needed to be alone,” she said. “You aren’t the first.”

His heart pounded.

“Do you have a pen?” Her voice was calm, as though she delivered these messages regularly. He thought he detected a faint lisp.

He put the receiver down on the table. Through the window he saw his parents moving about the yard; his father was repairing the birdhouse that Kristine filled with breadcrumbs and sunflower seeds each morning. With his shirt half-open, his father stood there breathing heavily, as though
he’d
biked fast all the way up Jylland’s Boulevard. In his mind’s eye, Asger imagined his father at his bedside at the sanatorium, and he heard the voice uttering the crucial message
…
Your mother and I
. He watched him pound nails into a piece of wood that held up the roof of the little birdhouse, shielding the platform from rain, and he saw him smile with satisfaction.

Such care.

“Yes, I’m ready,” he said into the receiver.

“Your mother
…
your
real
mother
…
we only have her name
…
is Else Margrethe Jensen. When you were born, she lived at Nørrebro in Copenhagen
…
in Fiskergade 5. You’ll have to do the rest yourself.”

“The rest?”

“Yes. Go to the Civil Registry. They’ll find her for you in a second. If she’s still alive, that is.”

Asger closed his eyes and envisioned the young, beautiful woman with the name Else Margrethe.

“Who are you talking to?” his father said suddenly, from just behind his right shoulder.

“Nobody,” he replied with a start, and then quickly reached for the pad on which
he’d
written his biological mother’s name.

“I think you’re the one being interrupted now,” Marie said playfully. “Tell your parents they ought to pay more attention to you than to their
garden
.” And then she hung up.

He’d
been too shocked at Ingolf’s sudden appearance to inquire about her peculiar knowledge of his parents’ obsessive gardening. It struck him later, but by then he had more important things on his mind.

“Else Margrethe, who is that?” His father stood behind him with a hammer in his hand, reading the name on the pad. A second later, Asger heard the hammer hit the floor. “Come out in the garden with us,” his father said. “You can help me patch up the holes in the garden hose. It’s leaking like a sieve. I’ve repaired the bird feeder so your mother can spoil all her winged friends again.” He laughed merrily and then marched thunderously across the room.

Asger followed, feeling a sudden, unrestrained joy that the man in the garden wasn’t his real father.

He told them he was going with two friends to a music festival in Roskilde—and Kristine and Ingolf were happy to see him displaying more normal interests.

Alone, he sailed on the ferry from Aarhus to Kalundborg and then took the train toward Tølløse.

From the station he wandered westward down the main road, walking through small towns with peculiar names like Gammel Tølløse and Tjørnede; he made no attempt to hitchhike because he wanted to arrive at his destination discreetly. Oddly enough, he passed through the same town that Peter Trøst, many years later, would view from his office window in the months when his television career was falling apart—but back then no one dreamed of such media palaces or a world teeming with TV signals.

According to the Civil Registry, his mother had moved to the town of Brorfelde in the middle of Zealand and lived on a farm less than three miles from a famous observatory that shared the town’s name. For the fifteen-year-old boy, all the pieces of the puzzle came together: if his biological mother had been working at the observatory, it would explain his lifelong, and clearly innate, passion for astronomy. (It didn’t occur to him how scientifically contentious this explanation was.)

From his hiding spot behind a low branch, he pulled his telescope from his bag. On each side of the ditch, wheat fields stretched to the east and the west, and with his naked eye he could make out several details of the farm: an old, covered well; a red wheelbarrow lying on its side; a little blue bench next to the green front door.

It wasn’t long before a woman came out into the barnyard, her face filling most of his lens, a dark oval in a deep shadow; it could have been anyone, but Asger didn’t for a second doubt that this was his mother. His real mother. It was one of the strangest and most intimate moments
he’d
ever experienced, and he sent a grateful thought to Marie. He studied the figure standing in the driveway. He looked at his glow-in-the-dark watch, then pressed a button, marking the moment he first saw her. She remained in the middle of the frame. No one else in the world existed, just her. Did she feel his presence? He blinked again, and it seemed to him there was dew on his lens.