She lifts the lid off the box. Inside is a little silver holder, rather like a cigarette case, engraved on the lid. When she opens it she sees a curved, oval mirror. She lifts it out and looks at her reflection, but obviously that is not the idea because she just sees a dark, distorted reflection of herself. Steinn laughs.
“I found this on the auction house’s website,” he says. “They don’t only sell paintings, but all kinds of stuff.” Hanna tells him about the Russian dolls and the Chinese tree and how she had wondered what sort of people bought artifacts there.
“So it’s people like you.”
“I didn’t buy it immediately. I’d been aware of it for some time.”
Hanna wonders when he’d bought it. Perhaps when Kristin told him Hanna would be laid off? After their meeting with Kristin, when Steinn stayed on? Before? Or later?
That is neither here nor there. Steinn is giving her a unique and beautiful gift, whatever it is.
“I simply had to buy this for you, because it’s just what you need.”
“What is it exactly?” asks Hanna finally. Steinn takes the mirror, and, lifting it up in front of her face, he shows her how she can capture a mirror image of the landscape behind them. In the mirror it resembles an eighteenth-century painting. Squinting, Hanna smiles.
“Wow! That’s marvelous!” She sees the birch trees in the mirror start to look like an old painting.
“It’s called a Claude glass,” says Steinn. “People used it in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to view the landscape. To see the landscape as it looks in Claude’s paintings.”
Hanna is very familiar with the seventeenth-century landscape artist Claude Lorrain and his paintings. She is still smiling. It’s exactly what she needed. She looks at Steinn; now would be the perfect moment to kiss him. She knows he is thinking the same.
19
AN ARTIST PAYS HIS RENT COPENHAGEN, 1943
Sitting erect on the light green corduroy sofa, the lady of the house regards her lodger with a questioning look, while the young man, an artist, stands timidly in the doorway. There is a tray on the ornate coffee table next to the sofa with a cup of tea and candies in a crystal bowl. She proffers the bowl; her hand is lily white, soft, and well manicured.
“May I offer you a sweet? You look so downcast.”
The artist enters the room hesitantly, stepping cautiously across the shiny parquet flooring, and is careful not to walk on the woven rug. He reaches out and picks up a sweet with his finger and thumb; he is so hungry that his hand is shaking.
“I hope there isn’t a problem with the rent—again?” She looks up sharply and contemplates his old worn jacket and the hole in his shoe. “Why don’t you take proper care of your appearance?” She picks up her embroidery, which is lying next to her on the sofa; she is not a woman to sit idle.
Her lodger doesn’t reply; there is no point. He cannot pay the rent; he is relying on her mercy, on the goodwill of the butcher’s wife, who is totally ignorant of art and doesn’t know what it is to be hungry. The paintings on the walls around her are from the red-haired woman’s collection, the woman who loves art, Elisabeth Hansen, who needed to sell off her whole collection.
But her paintings are not all here, just those that any visitors are already familiar with. The butcher’s wife seeks justification for her bourgeois existence through art. She looks for the familiar; she likes what she knows. The role of art is to reveal the bourgeoisie in the most flattering light, to endorse the accepted values of society. If she cannot see what a painting is saying, then it doesn’t appeal to her.
An idea suddenly occurs to him.
“I was wondering whether you might like a beautiful painting of a birch wood. You don’t have many paintings here that reveal the Danish countryside at its most beautiful.” She looks at him and thinks about it for a moment. He treads carefully, like a cat around a saucer of cream. He wants to delay the rent and paint a picture for her instead. She reaches out for a sweet. Lays her embroidery down in her lap.
“I saw a painting in the attic, which I thought no one would be interested in,” he adds. “An abstract painting, blue and yellow. It’s just going to rack and ruin up there. I could maybe paint over it.”
The lady of the house gazes out of the window; she is beginning to get bored of this conversation, of his timidity, and of the awkwardness of the situation. Why doesn’t the man just get himself a job? But then she decides to give him one more chance. She is a good woman. But if he doesn’t pay his rent in a fortnight, then he’s out. Relative or not, that’s the way it is. He hasn’t once paid his rent on time this autumn; he’s been one week late, three days late, or five days late. This obviously cannot go on; it’s just too unreliable. It would be better to have a girl, someone from the college for housewives, and then she could also help out with the domestic chores. But then it might be necessary to put a heater up in the attic room. Then again, spring is just around the corner.
She tries to recall the painting he is referring to. It must have been part of the collection Christian bought from Mrs. Hansen. Blue and yellow...Ah yes, she remembers it now. She couldn’t stand the thing. It was awfully ugly and she had asked for it to be taken away.
“You’re welcome to paint over it,” she says. “It’s a worthless piece. An abstract painting! No Dane is interested in that sort of thing. Please do just paint a pretty birch wood over it. There’s nothing in the world as delightful as a Danish birch.”
She smiles at him and extends the bowl of sweets to him again. What a relief, he thinks. Now he can buy himself a meal this evening. If he also buys some oatmeal, that should last him the week as well. If he goes down to the harbor early enough each day he might also get some work unloading the boats for a few days. There’s no other work to be had, no matter how hard he looks. But his joy is short-lived.
“You may have two weeks’ grace to pay your rent on this occasion. You’ve never paid on time since you first started living here. We’ll look on the painting as an additional remuneration because we’ve been so generous, despite these delays, but I’m afraid this can’t carry on. I’m giving you notice to quit at the end of this month. You should have the painting finished by then.”
She takes a sip of her tea and smiles at him.
“The room is clearly too expensive for you. It’s hardly too much to expect you to pay on time, is it? It costs a lot to run this home, you understand. My husband has to look after his affairs.”
At which the lady picks up her embroidery again; she rings the bell, and the maid comes running. The lodger passes her in the doorway. When he goes out into the corridor, to the stairs leading up to the unheated attic he has rented these past months, he hears the lady of the house telling the maid to prepare a three-course evening meal. In his head he pictures a birch copse, his assurance of a roof over his head for the coming weeks. What will happen after that, he doesn’t know.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ragna Sigurdardottir is a native of Reykjavik, Iceland, and the author of five novels. She studied French and fine arts in Aix-en-Provence before attending the Icelandic School for Arts and Crafts. After earning a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the Jan van Eyck Academy in the Netherlands, she worked as an artist and writer in Rotterdam and later in Denmark. She eventually returned home to Iceland, where she spent a decade working as an art critic for Icelandic newspapers. Currently she studies art theory at the University of Iceland and is writing her sixth novel. She lives with her husband and their two daughters on the outskirts of Reykjavik, just down the street from the North Atlantic Ocean.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Born in 1957, Sarah Bowen graduated from University College London with first class honors in Icelandic Studies. Her translations include “My Kingdom and Its Horses,” a short story by Audur Jonsdottir and The Creator, a novel by Gudrun Eva Minervudottir. She and her husband are based in Surrey, England, where she also works as a freelance BSL interpreter. They have three grown-up
daughters.
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