Breath and Bones

by Susann Cokal

  Albert’s conscience was pricked one day when she fainted clear off the platform, disturbing the careful arrangement of pillows and giving herself a large red welt on one leg. After that, he told her to listen for the church bells and to make sure she had a pause every hour. Then, while she stretched, he could clean his brushes, mix more paint, or occasionally make one of the crazed runs through the street that restored balance to the hand that held the brush, discipline to the eye that plotted composition and detail.

  Famke’s fall also made him realize how deeply dissatisfied he was with the pillows. They were solid, yellowish-white, soft—not at all the crystal daggers that a scorned nymph would erect around her ravisher. So when he came back from one of his wanderings, he was lugging a chunk of ice. He heaved it onto Famke’s platform and stood admiring it.

  “I fished it out of the old harbor,” he said, pushing it a little to the left. “I’ll paint this for today—so you may continue to rest, my dear.” He was as excited as a boy with a new puppy, or a youth with a first love. When he pulled off his gloves, his fingers were purple. It took a long time to warm them enough for work.

  “Fanden,” Famke said in a pleasant enough voice. She felt rejected, dejected, but the word relieved her feelings somewhat. Without bothering to hunt for her clothes, she climbed into bed. The cold had tired her out, and she told herself to be glad to have a cozy afternoon. It was nice to have pillows on the bed again.

  “Fan’n,” Albert repeated absently as she sank her head in the downy softness. Curled on her side, she watched him gaze deeply into the ice, as into a crystal ball. He mixed several shades of blue-white and began dabbing at the canvas with them, lost in his new idea. Eventually, lulled by the soft brush-brush of his work and the little wet sounds on the palette, Famke fell asleep.

  In sleep, her mind flew back to the orphanage. Now she was boiling soap again, as she’d been allowed to do that one time; all was just as before, except that it was Viggo, not the cauldron, that burst into flames. She felt the heat from his body, and she turned around to see the orphanage building was made of ice. Sister Birgit’s eyes filled with water and she was about to say something to Famke, but—

  Famke woke when she heard a crash in the street, followed by a curse from the same general area. Albert had thrown the ice block out the window.

  “It melted too fast,” he said with a shake of the head. “I couldn’t get the essence down—look, this bit will have to be painted out. I need you now.” Unceremoniously he dragged Famke from the bed and barely let her rub the sleep from her eyes before standing her up on the platform again.

  Famke didn’t attempt conversation; she tried not even to think about Albert and his mood. As she stood still for the remaining hour of daylight, she wondered instead what it was that Sister Birgit had wanted to say. Famke was no more superstitious than she was religious, but she felt there was a message in the dream, if only her mind could see it. And she suddenly realized that she missed Birgit; since leaving the farm on Dragør, she had been in no position to turn up at the convent orphanage.

  “Left leg bent,” Albert said crisply, and Famke came to attention. She had straightened her leg without knowing it; she’d have to focus on the pose or risk Albert’s wrath. So Famke made her mind a blank.

  Kapitel 4

  There were electric lights. They are one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Compared to an electric light a gas flame looks like a dismal tallow candle.

  JULIUS PETERSEN,

  LETTER, 1887

  Over the next week, Albert spent an hour or so each day down by the water, observing ice and trying to sketch it. The harsh December weather made his work difficult because he couldn’t get his fingers to move as they needed to; he complained bitterly and refused to paint at all until Famke persuaded him to concentrate awhile on her and leave the ice for later.

  “There will always be ice,” she said, feeling her English so improved she was able to make a little joke. “This is Denmark.”

  So Albert painted Famke, day after day, hour after churchly hour in the loft at the top of Fru Strand’s house. Occasionally he brought in a lump of ice for her to pose with, and then they had to close off the fireplace and open the windows to keep it from melting. But Famke did not complain: She felt they were as happy as they could be.

  One night near suppertime, when the streetlamps had long been lit, Albert returned sweating and full of ideas. “I ran all the way from Carlsberg brewery,” he panted, unfastening her hair. “I’ve solved the problem of the ice!” He seemed inordinately pleased as he turned to her bodice buttons.

  “Why were you to the brewery?” she asked, shrugging docilely out of the sleeves. She did not allow herself to glance at the fried fish congealing on its plate; art would always take precedence.

  “I watched the workers as they left for the day,” Albert said, tugging on her skirt. “All those faces, so tired, so cold, under that harsh light”—the brewery had gone to electric power that spring—“and I realized Nimue must have faces in her ice blocks. Her early victims. Isn’t it brilliant?” As the skirt came down, he looked up at her with the bright eyes of a schoolboy.

  Famke hesitated, holding the string of her bloomers. The hair on her body was already standing stiff in the cold. “Did you not say your Nimue must be virgin?” she asked.

  “Yes . . .”

  “So if Merlin is her first lover, should—shouldn’t—he be her first . . . victim . . . as well?”

  She saw immediately that she’d said the wrong thing. Albert’s face fell, and he himself dropped to the floor, where he sat bent-legged and plainly miserable. Famke cursed herself and then, to distract Albert, ripped away the cord of her bloomers and stepped out of them.

  He noticed nothing.

  “I think Nimue is beginning to bore me,” he mumbled into his lap. “I’ve nearly finished painting you, and the thought of rendering all that ice . . . Some faces inside would make it more interesting.”

  “But then the painting would be . . .” Famke hesitated; she was not used to speaking in conditional tenses, any more than she was used to voicing opinions on matters of art—“. . . less good. For those who see it, I mean to say. In your first plan, as you have said, they will see the moment of Nimue’s transforming into a villain, as well as the transforming she makes for Merlin. If you put in other men, she is not a virgin, and she is not changing.”

  In his glum silence, she wrapped her arms around herself for warmth. During several long minutes, Albert continued to stare down at himself, until finally he drew himself up and said, “I am going out again.”

  When Famke opened her eyes the next morning, the sun was already shining with a bright yellow light. One golden ray picked out a small silver box, slightly battered but gleaming, lying forgotten on the mantel.

  “Christiansborg,” she said without thinking.

  Her voice woke Albert up. He smelled sour as he yawned and stretched, reaching for her as if he’d forgotten their last conversations; perhaps he had drowned his frustrations more deeply than she had thought when he came home. He spoke as if he had a headache. “What was that, darling?”

  “I want to go to Christiansborg,” she blurted.

  “In the daytime? With all the guards about?”

  “I am going,” she said, knowing she sounded childish. “And you may come. I have an idea.”

  To her surprise, Albert yielded. Perhaps he knew she couldn’t be pushed too far this day, or perhaps aquavit (that was what she decided it had been, rather than the more prosaic beer) had set carpenters pounding in his head too hard for him to work. The two of them dressed and went out, breakfasting on fresh bakery bread.

  It was a short walk, accomplished in silence. In an unexpected thaw, much of the recent snow had melted, and most of the slush was gone from the roads. Famke held her skirts up but sank to her ankles in mud. Albert’s boots were already dirty, and he didn’t seem to notice they were getting dirtier. He was too glum to ca
tch Famke’s smoldering excitement.

  Without the shroud of snow, Christiansborg’s ruins made a black scar in the golden stone of the quarter, and the last harbor ice reflected their shadow. As yet there’d been no talk of rebuilding; the royal architects would have to outdo themselves, and perhaps they needed summer’s sun for inspiration. Troops of blue-coated guards still marched a circle round the ashes, but without real fervor; the valuables had already been recovered, either by royal servants or by looting commoners such as Famke and Albert. A good deal of the debris had been carted away as well, and men were working among the rest with shovels and a wagon. Overcoming her dislike of things related to fire, Famke headed immediately for them.

  “Hold op!” One of the workers whistled. “Hvad laver De?”

  Famke had a story ready. She explained that she only wished to look, that her mother had worked in this palace and died in the conflagration. She and her brother—she motioned to Albert, who had the grace to nod—had come to mourn. She let the light yellow shawl slide off her hair and gave the men the most demure expression the nuns had taught her. She even worked up a tear, more easily than she would have thought, to emphasize her point.

  “Kom så venligst.” One after another, the workmen invited the two of them closer, won over more by the beauty of Famke’s face than her flimsy story. Even the guard who had dutifully appeared waved them on.

  “What is it you want here?” Albert asked.

  “Shh,” she whispered. “No English. We are pretending you be a Dane.” To the admiration of the men watching, she began to step delicately through the ash heap, like a figure in a painting about sainthood or loneliness. The effect was good; no one seemed to notice the rough cloth of her skirt or the mud on her one pair of shoes, and even Albert appeared impressed as he followed her.

  “What are you looking for?” he whispered meekly.

  “I have an idea,” she said. “It is about ice.”

  He did not question her after that.

  Guards, workingmen, Famke and Albert: The only person whose presence among the ruins could not be explained was a tall gray-complected man in a dark suit and hat. He carried a long cane with a metal tip and he was poking it here and there into the ashes. Albert watched him moodily as Famke, on her knees, dug through the rubble. The workers and guards politely pretended not to notice what she was doing, thinking perhaps that she was looking for some last remnant of her fictional mother. The man did not look at her either, as her head was covered with the yellow shawl and they were too far apart for any but the most startling features to stand out. Still, Albert felt vaguely as if the other man had insulted Famke in some way, and he wondered what right such a fellow in genteel but shabby costume had among this royal ruin.

  The explanation came clear as the gray man drew closer, poking that long cane into the debris. The wind blew past him and up to Albert, who nearly gagged at the strong stench of camphor and formaldehyde. Obviously the man was a kind of mortician, or a mortician’s assistant; an apprentice to death, Albert thought, and savored the phrase. An apprentice to death, himself impregnated with needlefuls of scientific fluids that saved the body from the corrupting rot of blood. He must be out to drum up some business, though any reasonable professional would expect all the bodies to have been removed from this place by now. He passed on without looking at Albert or Famke.

  Famke rocked back in the mud. “Værsgo. Here. Albert!”

  He looked down into her face, so delightfully full of life and color. The undertaker hadn’t registered with her, beyond a brief cough at the smell he carried.

  “Albert, see,” she insisted, blinking up against the sun.

  He avoided the beseechment he expected to find in her eyes. “What do you have there?” he asked, as one might ask a child.

  She was holding something about as big as her fist. Albert watched her spit on it, then rub it on her sleeve, and at last hold it up to him. “Glass,” she said simply.

  He examined the thing. It was oddly shaped and heavy, a pale shade of green under the grime. He turned it over in both hands. “Yes, I see,” he said, though clearly he wasn’t seeing what she wanted him to.

  Anxiously, Famke got to her feet. “Glass,” she said again. She turned the lump so he was looking into the spot she’d cleaned. “Some melted. In the fire. Some is from windows, some from glass boxes and other things.” Excitement was chopping up her English. “Does it not resemble ice?”

  There was a brief pause as Albert took this in.

  “Darling—Famke—you’re brilliant!” It was his turn to fall to his knees; not to embrace her, as his words might have led her to hope, but to scrabble through the ashes in turn. “You clever, clever girl—there’s bushels of it here!”

  “I know this,” Famke said modestly. “I saw such glass when some boys burned down the Dragør church. Now you may use it for ice in the painting. And,” she added on a practical note, “we may keep the windows closed.”

  As the guards continued to look the other way, Famke and Albert collected as many molten shards as they could carry. They took the largest ones they could find and filled Famke’s small pocket, then the multiple flaps of Albert’s coat. Famke unbuttoned her bodice to tuck a cold lump inside. When they left the plain of rubble and made their way home with the booty, their movements were slow, freighted, and they sank deeper into the mud. But the new prospect made Albert very happy, and Famke’s heart caught some of that infectious warmth. She imagined it lighting up her chest like an electric globe.

  She was feeling hopeful, in fact, and as she and Albert left, she noticed the gray mortician; he seemed to be lifting a scrap of embroidery from a heap of ash, and she wondered if perhaps he had really lost someone in the flames. When he stood, she turned a dazzling smile upon him. He was clearly surprised, but he touched his hat to her in a gentlemanly fashion, releasing a new wave of pungent scent that made both Famke and Albert cough and the glass in their pockets rattle.

  The mortician reached into his pocket, simultaneously depositing the embroidered wisp and withdrawing a stiff cardboard square. “In case of need,” he said mournfully, and passed by them like the god of death, poking his cane into mound after mound. They watched him pass through the iron gates and disappear into the fog.

  Famke translated the card for Albert:

  EMBALMING PERFORMED

  • reasonable rates

  • lifelike appearance

  • excellent value

  GAMLE KONGEVEJ 16

  “It would appear he’s in need of his own services,” Albert joked, and Famke was so glad to feel she had pleased him that she laughed right along.

  Kapitel 5

  If I say that the houses did not disgust me, I tell you all I remember of them; for I cannot recollect any pleasurable sensations they excited; or that any object, produced by nature or art, took me out of myself.

  MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT,

  LETTER FROM DENMARK

  Thus it began, their best time together. Now Albert had models for both Nimue and her ice; around Famke’s feet he painted the Christiansborg glass many times larger than it was, filling in his little squares with vivid and detailed renderings of all he saw there. Famke, for her part, was glad not to be quite so chilled while posing, and even to have a day of rest here and there while Albert worked on the ice. She had caught a cold, or one had caught her, and it wouldn’t let go.

  She coughed and blew her nose until Albert was quite exasperated. “Darling, really,” he said; but then he fell ill, too, and resorted to the comforts of long dark hours of bed rest and Famke’s loving ministrations. They spent candlelit time together poring over Pre-Raphaelite prints; but in the morning, all was work again.

  On one blue afternoon, as he refined the lines of Famke’s streaming hair, Albert even mentioned his plans for the future. He rubbed out a red strand with a handful of bread, then bit the bread absentmindedly and said, chewing, “I quite like your country. I am finding it every bit as rich in inspirat
ion as I’d hoped. Perhaps I will come back.”

  Famke felt suddenly more naked than before, and completely tongue-tied. Here it was, what she was longing to hear: almost a promise for the future.

  “Of course,” Albert ruminated, “that can be only after I am accepted as a member of the Royal Academy. After I am able to live from the proceeds of my work. I might even do some portraits then—let the ladies’ commissions pay for the models’ fees.”

  This was an interesting notion. Aside from her room and board, Albert had not yet given Famke an Øre for her work; but then she did not wish him to. He had once explained that ladies posed only for portraits, for which they paid, while the hired models who lent themselves to narrative paintings belonged to a category just slightly removed from the Ludere strolling up and down the frozen canals. “Not you, of course,” he had said hastily, seeing her crestfallen. Somehow, not being paid removed her from the unpleasant models’ class; and Famke generally preferred pictures that told stories anyway.

  She summoned all her courage to ask now, “Will you paint me again?”

  “Of course.” He sneezed and blew his nose, carefully turning away from the canvas.

  “Will you be glad?” She waited a moment, and when he didn’t answer—he was still emptying his nose—she added softly, “Vil du elske mig?” Will you love me?

  He didn’t seem to hear, and he would not have understood the Danish words; but Famke took his silence for all the affirmation she needed.

  “Darling, please stop smiling,” he said, looking up. “Remember, Nimue is angry.”

  But in the warmth of her smile, he was inspired to pull out a pair of dried butterflies—saved, perhaps, from that bridal carriage ride—that might alight on the ice blocks and freeze there, to represent springtime and the love that once existed between Nimue and Merlin. He bought some silk flowers, frayed and faded them, then painted them withered and bewormed in the ice. Famke did not need him to explain that symbolism.