“No, not Nora.” I strained out a tight little laugh, as though I knew what was funny. “The maid, perhaps? Or the governess.” The girls had been talking about the parts over dinner for several nights. I wished I’d paid closer attention.
“Well, there’s certainly a difference. I suppose we’ll soon find out!”
Anita played the maid and her role was smaller than I’d expected. Perhaps it was because the other characters played through so many variations of sacrifice, lies and deceit. They snuck about and drank and stormed at each other. Oh, and Nora’s awful dance! Such melodrama, yes, but by the third act, I was hardly aware of Mr. Bruun at my side. When the maid delivered the fated letter on stage, I sensed him beside me again. I’d moved forward in my seat and when I sat back again, his arm pressed up against mine. The play of fabric on my arm, the heat of him. I didn’t move away.
After the final curtain, I suggested that we say hello to Anita. “You’ve been backstage before?” Mr. Bruun was still seated, leaning back. As I watched others leaving, I could sense him in my periphery, watching me. I turned back to him and he looked like he was swallowing a smile.
“No.” Nor had I been to the theatre with a man, only with other girls from the residence. “It’s worth a try, yes?” I could be whomever I wanted that night.
We made our way against the crowd, down one narrow, dark hall, then another. Mr. Bruun followed me closely, his hands reaching out, touching my waist as we rounded corners. We came up against dead ends, doubled back on ourselves, stumbled and tripped on ropes, laughing as we did. “Good Lord, you’ve led us into quite a labyrinth, haven’t you? Okay, one last try and then we admit defeat. Deal?”
“It can’t be this hard to find! Let’s listen.” I thought we might hear voices that would lead us to where the actors and actresses were.
“Here, a door.” Bertram pushed against it and took my hand. We emerged into a lane behind the theatre, a slap of cool air and the fetid smell of garbage, both of us laughing. “Well, this is certainly not backstage!”
“Certainly not.”
Bertram put his hands on my shoulders and gently steered me out of the lane. I liked the weight of his hands there, the warmth. When we were almost at the street, a woman pushed up away from a shadowed wall of the building and came toward us. I turned away without seeing her, not wanting to stop.
“Inger-Marie?” My name, a voice I recognized.
I took another step toward the street and the lights there.
“It is!” she said. “You must recognize me, too, Marie. It’s not been that long, has it?” I turned to face her, Mr. Bruun close behind me. Her makeup was more garish than it had been – rouge visible even in the low light, kohl heavy around her eyes – and her hair in a different style, a fringe hanging over her face, the rest piled like a nest, spilling over the top of her head.
“Lovise?”
“It is you!” She lunged at me in a hug. I held myself stiffly, patted her back. She smelled slightly of vinegar under a cloyingly sweet smell – sugar, jasmine. She backed away, held my hands in hers and swung our arms back and forth together, giggling, as though we were sisters, children. She dropped my hands and took a step toward Bertram, then stood posing, hand on hip, bottom lip jutted out. She motioned toward him with her chin, “And who’s this?” Voice an octave lower.
“Lovise, I –” I wanted to get away, to turn from her.
“Yes? You?” She looked from me to Bertram, both hands on her hips now, a frown before her face split into a laugh and she threw her head back, then leaned toward us, voice a whisper. “You’d like a deal for the two of you? I can do that, you know. Two are better than one, three’s a treat.” She winked at Bertram, made a little kiss-kiss motion toward me in a way that seemed guileless, childlike.
“Oh no, Lovise. I can’t, we –”
“We have to go, miss.” Mr. Bruun took my elbow and we turned away from her, walked briskly away. When we were around the corner, I pulled my arm away from his. “An old friend?”
“Not a friend, exactly. I didn’t know her long.” We were on the street of my residence. It seemed so dim, darkness sporing the edges as it narrowed. “Are the lights low on gas?” I walked a few steps before I realized that Mr. Bruun had stopped. I turned back to him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” The person I’d been trying to be at the theatre – the one who made suggestions, laughed at being lost backstage – was gone.
“You seem – was it seeing your friend?”
“I told you, she isn’t my friend.”
“Friend or not, did seeing her upset you?”
“Not exactly.” I kept walking and he joined me. I remembered the man whom Lovise had found to take me to the shops. My body slammed against stones, his terrible smell. Lovise’s scent, both syrup and curdle at once. I stopped, put a palm to my forehead to stop the tilt of the ground, spin of my head. When I looked up, we were at the bottom of the stairs to the residence and I stared at the stone cut of the steps, as though studying them. At the top, the doors framed two rectangles of hazy light.
Mr. Bruun held my hand as he walked me up. “You’re sure you’re all right?” I nodded. “I suppose I can’t see you in, make sure you’re well?”
“Of course not. It’s policy.”
“Yes, policy. You’ve mentioned.”
“Yes.” The smell of Lovise was still in my nose. I resisted raising a sleeve to see if her scent was on the fabric. “I’m not to feel sorry for you, am I?”
“Of course not! And I won’t feel sorry for you, either, Miss Jüül.” I’d seen the lick of discomfort pass over Mr. Bruun’s face before he snapped it into a quick smile. “I mean, I am sorry that you’re upset about something.”
“I’m fine.”
“Of course.”
We stood facing each other, the air cool, damp where it met my skin. Laughter came from the other side of the door. I wanted to go in.
“You’ll let Anita know that I’ll be by tomorrow morning?”
“I will.” I watched Mr. Bruun go down the steps. He turned at the bottom, raised his hand to his temple, his chin low. His stride was quick and steady as he walked away. The evening hadn’t gone as I had planned, but then I’d planned none of it, had I?
Eight
The next morning when I left to go to work, Mr. Bruun and Anita were on the front steps. They stood when I came out. Anita’s face was blurred as she turned away from me, wiped at her eyes. Her voice cracked as she went back in. “I’ll see you tonight, Marie.”
When the door closed, I turned to Mr. Bruun. “Is your cousin all right?”
“She will be. She’s had some trouble. I know she’ll be fine, though.” He reached toward my shoulder, then dropped his hands to his sides. “Can I walk you to work?”
Mr. Bruun accompanied me to and from the shop for the next three days. On the third evening, we were at the front door of my building, standing on the steps as we had each time, when he said, “I leave tomorrow to go home.” He moved toward me and I wondered if this was it, a proper first kiss, but he leaned down and whispered, “Come with me.”
“I can’t.” I fancied myself an adult by then. Someone who performed her job well. Someone who aspired to more but hadn’t figured out what that might be. “I couldn’t.”
Mr. Bruun backed away from me, leaned against the stone ledge and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve spent three days with you. Enough time to know that each morning you walk the same way to work, stop in the same places along the way. And every evening, you’ve let me walk you home, made small talk, then said a polite goodbye. How long do you want to live your life like this?”
“You don’t know me, Mr. Bruun. You don’t know what I do or don’t want for myself.”
“Well, answer me this: Are you living the life you want to be living?”
“I believe I’m living a good life for a young woman of my social standing.”
“So, no.”
“What would you suggest – that I leave my position and my residence without notice, leave the shop without an employee and the ladies short a flatmate? How will this make my life more fulfilling?” Before he could answer, I added, “I don’t believe our lives should be guided by whims.”
“Of course you don’t. And you’ll never know, will you, what might happen if you were to leave this dull, ordered world?” He looked at me briefly and then seemed to study something over my head. “My sister and brother-in-law have a tea shop where I’m sure you could work. You could leave a month’s rent when you go or send it from there,” he said, as though he’d already given it some thought. “Neither the shop nor the ladies here will be without a replacement for you for long – and what is that saying?”
“You’re trying to convince me that I’m replaceable? That this is a good enough reason to leave?”
“I suppose I am.”
* * *
I was on the platform minutes before the train was to depart, wearing my best wool coat and hat, my finest stockings, my boots well polished. I looked every part a young lady of a certain class, not the farm girl that I’d been when I’d arrived in Copenhagen. I could’ve been going on a weekend junket, as I’d wanted to do with my fine luggage ever since I’d bought it at cost from the shop. A lovers’ weekend, though I was giving up a lot for something that was more than a weekend, following someone who was less than a lover. I stood, a suitcase in both hands, and looked straight ahead at the space above the tracks where the train would appear, where the conductor would step down and hold out his hand for tickets. I had one. I was ready. I just needed to keep looking straight ahead.
When Mr. Bruun yelled, “Miss Jüül!” I saw him in my periphery, but I wouldn’t turn. He took the luggage out of my hands and spun me to face him, the smile too big, sloppy on his face. “You’re here!”
I pulled my hands from his and lowered them. I knew that people were watching, expecting something from us – something sweet and uplifting, perhaps, or brooding and dramatic, but something nonetheless. “I’m here.”
Mr. Bruun said quietly into my ear, “I’m so happy.” I wondered if he was happy for me or for himself. What we had seemed superficial, based on banter and a kind of bravado on both our parts, and Mr. Bruun’s reaction to me seemed overblown, misplaced. I felt like someone in a role in which she had no idea how to behave or react. I wasn’t an actress like his cousin, but I could learn what was expected of me.
The train moved north into lowlands snaked with waterways and pools, the land vibrant green puzzle pieces, the sky a smear of grey. I sat by the window and watched. Mr. Bruun cleared his throat a few times as though he might speak, but he didn’t say anything. Several minutes into the trip, he said, “You’ll like it there,” and I jumped. I turned from the window and looked at him. “North, in Zealand.”
“You’re sure, then?” I meant to tease him, to sound carefree, but I heard the anxious edge in my voice.
“Yes,” he said, and I saw something in the way he tilted his head, softened his eyes. In Copenhagen, we had been a kind of equals. Now, I would be under his care in a way. As though to confirm this, he reached over, took my hand. I didn’t move it from off my own lap. It was all I could do to not pull away. In that moment, I wanted to be able to stand up and get off the train. I wanted to go back. I leaned against the seat and fell asleep.
“Miss Jüül?” I heard my name a few times before I saw Mr. Bruun, his face so close I could see the scar chipped out of his cheekbone, the deep brown of his eyes. He moved away a bit, a hand on each knee, still leaning toward me. “You’re awake.”
“I suppose.” I watched him, a stranger again. If anything, a feeling of reserve had grown between us, those four days together in the city now a spot in the distance from which we were moving away.
“Can I call you by your first name? I’d like it if you called me Bertram.”
“All right.” I tried out the sound of his first name, “Bertram.”
“There’s something I need to tell you, Marie.” Of course there was. I waited for what it would be. “My sister’s tea and sweets shop, it’s not – it’s not in Tisvilde, where I live.”
I blinked, then rubbed my palm against one eye, then the other. “Oh?”
“Tisvilde is so small. I didn’t know of any work there. But you won’t be far, and I know you’ll like my sister.”
I didn’t know what to say in response, so I said nothing.
“I’ll visit.”
* * *
We disembarked at a flat, wet town, and Bertram led me along a canal cut through the centre, linking a large lake to the fjord, binding moisture into the air. Willows sprinkled water on us as we entered Soeberg’s Bakery and Confectionery on a street across from the canal. We went through the shop to the bakery in the back. Two people looked up: a man who tucked his long blond hair behind his ears and a woman, her hair braided loosely and looped around her head. “Oh, Bertram!” She moved around a table toward us, wiping flour against her apron. “Who have you brought us? She looks so lovely, like a northern milkmaid! Are you from the north, darling?”
“We met in Copenhagen,” I answered.
“Yes, of course, but where are you from?”
“My family has a holding in Gudum, in Jutland.”
“Anna, this is Inger-Marie Jüül.”
She took a cigarette from the pocket of her apron and lit it as she looked at me, touched it to her mouth for just a moment, seemed to kiss the end of it, then held it like a tiny wand between her fingers.
“Miss Jüül, this is my sister, Anna.”
The man came around me, hand on my back for a moment, held out a pastry on a plate. “Taste this.” I took a bite of the pastry, folded with layers of jellied fruit. He watched me. “Well, what do you think?”
I swallowed, licked the icing sugar from my lips. “It’s delicious.”
He looked from Bertram to Anna, grinning, then asked, “Are you an early morning person?”
“I can be.”
They all laughed at this, as though I were being clever, and Bertram said, “And this is my brother-in-law, Diderik Soeberg.”
“So formal! My God. Call me Dirk, Inger-Marie, is it? You’re hired. And we’ve a lovely little flat for you upstairs.”
I accepted the job, said goodbye to Bertram in front of his sister and brother-in-law with no more affection than pressed cheeks, lips in the air beside our faces. I’d misunderstood something, possibly a whole series of things. I’d assumed we were engaged in a kind of courtship. I liked the way Bertram’s mouth pressed upward into a smile, caught on one sharp tooth. I liked the sheen in his eyes when he joked, chiding me, as he had the day we met on the steps. Now, it seemed I’d misread something. I had no friend like I’d been to so many women at our shared residence, waiting for me to come home, to parse the events of the past week and figure out what had been misinterpreted, and by whom.
Nine
I worked in the bakery alongside Dirk, beginning at four in the morning and finishing at noon. Anna would arrive mid-morning with three children, each of them under four. They had blond hair that rose from their round heads like dandelion fluff. Anna’s hair was a colour between blond and a red so pale that it looked pink. Her face was pushed into a heart shape by cheekbones that were dotted with freckles. The most striking thing about Anna, though, was that she wore men’s apparel. Rarely, if ever, did I see her in a skirt or dress. I was never sure if she and Dirk shared clothes or if they each had their own men’s wardrobes. Her pants hung loosely from fine leather belts, and she didn’t wear a vest or tie with her shirts. Nor did she wear a brassiere. She would undo a few buttons on her shirt and nurse one child or another, sometimes two at once, while sitting in the ba
ck of the shop, talking with us while we rolled or pounded dough, cut shapes, folded pastries.
I’m not sure whom I found more distracting as I worked – the children, who were generally well-behaved, as well as they could be for infants and toddlers, or Anna, her skin covered by the loose cotton of a man’s shirt and nothing else, or exposed as those shirts slipped from her shoulder.
Anna never asked me if I minded or begged pardon or anything beyond carrying on as though it were the most natural thing to do to nurse her children in the bakery. She and Dirk showed each other affection in the same way Anna dressed – loose, open, presumptuous. He would cup and squeeze her behind; Anna would pull Dirk toward her. Their kisses were frequent and relaxed. The fair-haired brood played with dough or blocks or dolls around our feet, often barefoot themselves and smattered with flour. I wondered if it was appropriate for me, never mind their children, to see the couple that way. They may have been playing it up for me a bit. They thought me naive. I suppose I was. I’d not met people like the Soebergs before. In Copenhagen, there were the girls who tenaciously guarded their honour even as they continued to blunder, led astray by their own desire or the honeyed words of handsome men. And there were women like Lovise, propped along alleys, reminders that decorum didn’t pull everyone with equal strength.
When I first arrived, there was another girl who worked in the front in the confectionery and tea shop. She and I rarely spoke and when she left, she did so abruptly, coming into the back where Dirk and I were baking and Anna was singing as she rolled dough with the children. The girl interrupted. “I am going now. God no longer wants me to work here.” She took off her apron and left. We all watched her leave, then stared at the closed door. When we finally looked at each other, Anna began laughing first, followed by Dirk. “Well, I guess you’ve a new position.” I didn’t understand. “I know you’ve got a chest full of nice clothes up there. Bertram has told me as much.” I wondered how and when that had ever come up. “You’d best get changed and out front before we lose some customers.”
Little Fortress Page 6
