by Susann Cokal
The first wedding ceremony was celebrated that evening, in Erastus Mortensen’s cabin. Mortensen himself presided, and the missionary to Sweden served as witness. Famke had no experience of weddings, so she could not tell if this one were special in any way; to her it felt like just another church service. She had always found priests difficult to listen to . . . She kept her mind on Albert and how this scene might unfurl under his paintbrush: Goodhouse’s long tangle of a beard, the yellow shawl over her own head like a veil; Albert might transform them into God and wife, and it would be no more or less remarkable than the pantheon of goddesses under whose names he had already painted Famke. Yes, it was best to see this ceremony as a painting . . .
Even on deck that night, staring up at the stars and watching her hair make a red tunnel in the wind, Famke had a hard time realizing what she had done. Heber, now her husband, was apparently too shy to embrace her; so he was just a disembodied voice behind her back, going on about his plans for the silkworm farm and the great Saintly family they would raise on it. She heard almost nothing he said. “Nye Verdener,” she whispered over and over.
Chapter 13
I should say, then, that Brigham Young, prophet and leader of his people, made a huge blunder when he brought them so far for so little. Moses led his people through the wilderness, but he landed them in Canaan, flowing with milk and honey. Brigham was a very poor sort of Moses.
CHARLES NORDHOFF, “SIGHTS BY THE WAY,”
IN CALIFORNIA: FOR HEALTH, PLEASURE, AND RESIDENCE
The air is good and pure, sweetened by the healthy breezes.
W. CLAYTON,
THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS’ EMIGRANTS’ GUIDE
The Olivia steamed into the Narrows near New York Harbor on July 18, 1885, having taken twelve days to cross the ocean. The emigrants aboard—new Saints and some others less in evidence during the voyage—were already crowded onto the decks, making the ship top-heavy as they craned for their first view of American shores. Because of her exalted status as the chief missionary’s protégée, Famke had a spot on the top deck, near the railing, and so she was one of the first to watch the land come into focus: ugly gray docks and squat warehouses much like those she’d seen in Denmark; a very few trees, and all around a swarm of boats. The Olivia chugged up between sprawling docklands, engines groaning for the long-needed rest, and at last settled into her space at the pier.
“Act healthy,” she heard someone mutter. Perhaps it was Heber, at her back, but the deck was too crowded to tell.
With the ship anchored at the dock, an immigration official came on board and gave each of the new Americans a card with a number. Famke was glad to see that hers was lower than the other steerage passengers’; she got to descend the gangway before they did, and Heber ushered her through a medical inspection. She held her breath and managed not to cough, but other aspirants were not so lucky. Heber told her that the ill and infectious were bound for a special hospital, and Elder Mortensen would wait with them there. Famke marveled that in America, even a sick immigrant from steerage might be cared for, if he wasn’t sent home posthaste.
Yes, she was on American soil. It was unsteady soil, seeming to pitch and roll in much the way the ship had done at first. She realized she had acquired what Heber called sea legs; she was glad to have his arm to guide her onto the barge that would bring her and the other new Saints to a place he called Castle Garden.
Famke’s heart flopped in her chest. She imagined a long stretch of lawn hemmed in by flowers, just as in Kongens Have, with a palace like Rosenborg in the background; but here there would also be a gravel avenue that led her directly to Albert. She shivered with each lurch of the barge engines.
Castle Garden turned out to be a huge round structure, formerly a theater, surrounded by ugly gray-brown buildings. Famke crowded inside with the other new Americans, to where the noise was disorienting and the fug of breath fairly choked her. Heber, however, seemed equally comfortable in every element, and he steered her swiftly through customs and up to a clerk who glanced at her through greasy spectacles and made her feel utterly insignificant.
“Have you any prospects in America?” he asked in a drone.
“Please?” she asked. “Prospects?”
Heber spoke for her: “She is free of debt and employed. She will be my servant.”
Before Famke had time to sort out the confusion that statement created in her mind, the clerk asked for her name.
Famke had always liked the name Goodhouse and what it meant; she thought perhaps it was a name Heber’s ancestors had given themselves when they first came to America. As an orphan, she’d never had a last name, and she wanted one that meant something nice. So, with a quick thought, she said, “Famke Sommerfugl.”
Famke Butterfly—she was pleased to think this would be her official designation. Butterflies came in many beautiful colors and varieties, and they flitted lightly from place to place. Albert had often painted her with butterflies, when they suited his subject.
“Summer fool?” The clerk’s brow furrowed.
She said it again, even more pleased than before. Famke Sommerfugl—it sounded like a song.
“Aha.” The clerk wrote down what seemed plausible in the bustle and din of hundreds of foreigners answering the same question: Famka Summerfield. He entered it first in his ledger, then on a card he gave to Famke; and by the time she deciphered his spidery handwriting he was already processing the next person, and she and Heber were walking into the sunshine.
“You’ll have to wait awhile,” Heber said, depositing her on a bench in a broad open area. He was obviously reluctant to let her out of his sight. “I must help the others to register. Some of them have heavy bags that will need to be inspected . . . Soon the other ladies should come through, and they will be company for you.”
“I will wait,” Famke said, her eyes sparkling with the newness of it all.
“Stay in one place,” he said sternly, for she looked very young to him in that moment.
She laughed giddily at his concern. But when he stepped away and she saw his spectacled eyes blinking over his dark-suited shoulder at her, she felt a little pang. She was alone in a strange country. The New York sunshine was sweltering, and she could see steam rising up from the river; no one had told her America would smell so bad . . .
Nonetheless, Famke had no wish to sit patiently with the other lady immigrants. Her idea of one place was bigger than Heber’s, and somewhere in the mass of land stretching to the west was Albert—how could she then hold still? She was struck with an impulse to leave the Saints here and pursue Albert on her own. She could get a train today, rather than spending the night in town, and be in Utah (which to her meant the whole western territory) that much sooner.
Shouldering the bundle with all her clothes and possessions, and feeling the pocket with the tinderbox slap against her thigh, she strolled along the waterfront, trying to get her land legs back and guess where the train station might be. A brownish cloud lay over the sun and sky, and below that stretched a complex web of wires—for telegraph and electricity, Famke thought, and perhaps even the fancy new telephones that some Danes thought occupied every American household. She looked around for the wonderful bridge Albert had told her about, the one that had supported twenty-one circus elephants, but in the tangle of steel and stone she could see no such thing. She turned her attention to the people.
Real Americans were milling on the far side of a barricade, in brilliant clothing and elaborate hats. Famke sauntered as close as she dared. The women wore dresses in the most splendid shades of pink and blue and yellow, their skirts draped across the front and puffed out behind over bustles larger than anything she’d seen on a Danish woman. The arrangement made their waists look tiny. These weird, bright creatures were laughing so loudly the sound carried to Famke, and they gestured with silk parasols and ebony canes. They were facing toward the old theater and seemed to have gathered for some sort of entertainment, even as thousands of others we
nt through the business of becoming Americans.
Famke realized with a shock that it was this that drew them, the spectacle of strangers arriving on their shores. Of herself and her countrypeople.
She turned and looked, too, at the flood of new citizens coming out of the round building, all clutching their crisp identity cards. From this distance, they appeared drab, moth-eaten, with the hollow eyes of people who hadn’t slept properly in weeks and had vomited up all they’d eaten. She tried to imagine Albert emerging that way a few weeks earlier—but it was hard enough to picture herself, just moments ago, doing the same thing. She felt nothing of Albert here, saw nothing of either one of them in the gray masses. She looked longingly toward the elegant few on the barricade’s other side, despising and envying them at the same time. Unknowingly, she slowed her steps till she was barely moving.
“Famka Summerfield,” she repeated to herself. She decided the name was pretty, almost as pretty as Famke Sommerfugl would have been. It was an American name.
Soon she might have no right to her own last name anyway; she would be “sealed” to Heber and would be called Famke (or Famka) Goodhouse. Unless, of course, she found Albert before then . . . Hastily she said, “Albert Castle. Famke Cas—” But she couldn’t complete that last.
She reached into her pocket and stroked the tinderbox. “Famke Sommerfugl,” she said stubbornly.
“I beg your pardon?”
Famke turned around. The voice had come from a man somewhat shorter than herself, wearing a light green suit and long side whiskers. The top of his head was bald and pinkly gleaming in the sunlight, exposed because he had his hat in one hand. He was as pale-complected as a Dane, but his bearing and manner somehow marked him out as American. Such being the case, she assumed he could not be speaking to her, and she turned away again.
The little man stepped swiftly and presented himself in her path. She saw that the hand without the hat held a paper tablet and a pencil; he replaced the hat, licked the end of the pencil, and held it over the tablet, smiling up into her face ingratiatingly. “You spoke,” he said. “What did you say?”
“I was not speaking to you,” Famke said, then realized she shouldn’t have answered him at all. He might not be dressed like one of the Nyhavn sailors, but his intentions were probably quite similar to theirs, and any words exchanged could be viewed as encouragement. She began striding back toward the splendid Americans, trying to land her boots square on the boards of the pier.
It was useless. She stumbled, and the man in green caught her. He also retrieved her bundle, which she’d pitched nearly over the railing and into the river, and he almost lost his hat in the process.
“Thank you,” she said grudgingly, as she took the bundle from him.
“It is a great thing,” he said, redistributing pad, pencil, and hat about his person (with the hat in its proper position, he looked years younger, perhaps still in his twenties), “to be of some small service to a recent arrival on these fair shores—or, no,” he amended, with an expression that looked as if it were meant to be a frown but resembled a smile much more, “a fair arrival on these recently blessed shores.”
Famke stared at him. No one had spoken to her this way before. “Thank you for collecting my things.” She started off again, stepping even more carefully this time.
“Please.” He stopped her, waving the tablet so the pages riffled in the wind. “Do not let my attentions offend you, for they are not meant that way. I am no ordinary gadabout of the pier—”
Famke finally made sense of the objects he carried. She felt a spark of excitement. “You are an artist?”
He stroked his side whiskers. “In a manner of speaking.”
The spark burst into a shimmering storm. She forgot all caution and asked, “You draw pictures?”
“You might say I do,” he said modestly, “but with words rather than curving lines. I am what is called a correspondent, an inkslinger, a writer for the principal newspapers of this great land. I would like to do a word-portrait of you; I am preparing an article for the New York Times.”
He paused for her acknowledgment; she nodded, remembering a few issues lying on Herr Skatkammer’s desk.
“I have been sent to report on a shipful of freshly minted Latter-Day Saints,” the man explained; “particularly the ladies, you pearls of great price. I—the people of America—would be interested in your views on a number of topics. Tell me, are you grateful for the religious freedom afforded by our great nation?”
Famke barely heard him, aside from noticing that he repeated the word “great” rather often. “You are familiar with people newly come to America?” In her excitement, she pronounced it Mæka. “The famous people? Artists?”
“But this piece is to be about commoners—not that there is anything at all common about yourself,” he added gallantly. “Their views on religion, their expectations of the new Zion, their family lives prior to arriving on these shores . . .”
“Do you know Albert Castle? Do you know where he is now?”
He wrote a couple words—Albert’s name—on the pad. “And who is this? Some Mormon potentate?”
“He is a painter,” she said reprovingly. “A great artist, in your country since perhaps two weeks. He is going to the West, but I am not certain where. Will you tell me?”
“Does he paint Mormon subjects?” asked the correspondent. “Perhaps the Miracle of the Seagulls, who flew to Utah to gobble up a plague of crickets, or the Miracle of the Prairie Chickens, who appeared on the hilltop to provide meat when Zion was starving—”
“Albert Castle is no Mormon.” Famke thrust her hand down her skirt and into her pocket and came up with the sketch. “He is a painter,” she said, waving the sketch under the little man’s nose. “Can you help me find him?”
The man’s eyes flicked toward the penciled image, then back to the living face before him. “Are all young Saints so interested in art?”
Famke made an angry exclamation and set off walking again. The river breeze nearly ripped the page from her hand, and she folded it up again—awkwardly, with the bundle slipped over her wrist—and put it back in its pocket.
A crowd of Scandinavian immigrants was waiting outside Castle Garden now, unaware that nearby the splendid Americans were pointing and laughing at them. She recognized several cabinmates, still somewhat green around the lips; she thought Heber would surely be finished soon, and then they would all go to the hotel. If she were going to strike out on her own, now was the time.
She stopped, let the little man catch up to her. She had to be certain of one thing: “Do you know Albert Castle?”
At last he gave her an answer. “I have never heard of him. But let me tell you how to find me, should you be so inclined—”
“Fanden!” Famke saw Heber, his face grave in its ring of hair as he helped elderly Sister Carstensen to sit on the very bench where he had left Famke. He saw Famke, too, and his face lit up in a smile as he lifted his hand to wave. Then his expression darkened, and she realized he’d seen the man at her side.
The correspondent kept on, blissfully oblivious. “My name—”
“Oh, leave me!” Famke bent over in a sudden fit of coughing.
“The devil, you say!” He stepped back, hesitated, then politely offered her his handkerchief. Famke took it blindly, stoppered her mouth, and fled toward her husband.
No, she decided, it was far better to stay with Heber; alone in this new world, she might lose herself, just when she so badly needed to find Albert. This cough—she bent over again—surely this cough would improve in the clean air of the West, in the arms of her love.
Viggo bade farewell to his homeland in the way Famke had wanted to, standing on deck and watching first the fairytale copper church spires and then the prosaic wharves, masts, and warehouses recede. He took with him four hundred Kroner in a bag tied around his neck; the prospect of menial work on a steamship bound from Liverpool to Boston; three pounds of arsenic, in case there s
hould be an odd job of embalming to be had; and a fat packet of letters that included a lengthy epistle from Mother Birgit to Famke, wrapped around the note from the boardinghouse landlord, and at the heart of the bundle, the letter from Famke’s Albert. Viggo had never seen so much money before, or so many words written to one person. Neither had he a sense of what the work would be like, but at the moment he was feeling a mixture of excitement and trepidation. No one he knew—except Famke—had ever crossed the ocean.
A knot of sailors worked behind him now, their forked caps swaying as they coiled ropes, trimmed sails, and told each other tales of fancy in a mix of tongues:
“As tall as a house she was, with eyes the size of dinner plates and nipples like—”
Here the sailor must have stopped to illustrate his tale manually, for Viggo heard a chorus of whistles and hoots.
“. . . nothing but a nightdress to save her from the cold, and that itself made of ice,” another voice finished.
Here Viggo stopped even half-listening; he had seen enough women in their shifts, farm wives withered and frail, dead in their sleep.
As he watched, Copenhagen became a smoky scribble against the sky, then vanished entirely. Viggo was overwhelmed with a sense of loss. The Gunnlod chugged up the Belt between Denmark and Sweden, keeping in sight of land; but Viggo felt with a rising panic that he was never to see his homeland again, had nothing left of it . . . except the letters written to Famke.
It was no more right for him to read Famke’s mail than it had been for Mother Birgit to do so; if anything, it was a graver sin on his part, as he could in no way be considered Famke’s confessor. Still, he pulled the fat packet from his rucksack and tore it open. The letter in English he could not read, and the one from the landlord was brief and dull; but he unfolded the outermost letter, the one from Birgit, and began.
