Breath and Bones (10 page)

So Famke stayed in Albert's studio—now reverted to a garret, and a murky one at that—and spent her days in silent meditation. She ate little but didn't seem to feel hungry. She rubbed the tinderbox, thinking sometimes of her days at the orphanage, sometimes of the farm in Dragør, but most constantly of Albert and those few happy months. She even took out the matches, always slightly frightening to her with their potential for harm, and lined them up like soldiers. There were twenty-three of them: a number in which she could invest no significance.

There were, of course, times she'd walk out to the market and occasionally to the King's Garden, to look at the still-intact Rosenborg castle and turn her face briefly to the sun. Feeling reckless and extravagant, she paid the two
Kroner
which gave her the right to enter the gates during certain hours, brush away the frost, and sit on the dark benches there, surrounded by maidservants, nurses, and a few strolling prostitutes of exceptionally high class. With warmer weather, the wealthy ladies came out, too, twirling their parasols above bonnets and curled fringes, letting their bustles bounce beneath their short jackets in a way that Famke found very fine. She imagined that someday these ladies would stroll past Albert's paintings—perhaps his
Nimue
—in a big museum; they would wonder about the artist and the model. She felt a thrill of anticipatory pride, and again of hope. It was as if these elegant ladies had promised her that when he achieved his success, he would come back. After all, he found Denmark inspiring, and Pre-Raphaelite painters sometimes married their models.

While Famke waited, she did a few small things to improve herself. She visited one of the new department stores and bought herself the much-coveted corset. Though it did indeed make her waist even smaller, she didn't like it. No one had told her it would be so very tight, that it would cut off
her breath and make her feel as if she were being smothered with a pillow. Albert didn't like corsets anyway; he thought they distorted the body, made the spine unnaturally straight and the waist unsupple. She put it at the bottom of the little pile of her clothing.

On her next excursion she bought a book from a stall by Gråbrødretorv: a Danish-English dictionary. The cover was tattered and some pages missing, but Famke thought the little book would be very useful when Albert came back—or sent for her to join him. Perhaps if she had bought such a book long ago, they'd be together now. In any event, Famke set herself to learn twenty words a day. Her progress was swift; she knew a bit of the pronunciation already, she had a good memory, and there was little else to do. She recited the words on her walks, barely noticing the tulips that bloomed in the tenement yards or the strings of smelly flounder stretched to dry among masts in the canals and harbors:
Pellucid . . . effulgent . . . gorgeous
. . .

She thought of writing Albert a letter using these words, but she didn't know his address. If she'd had the money she might have traveled to London to look for him; but what a girl might accomplish in person would be impossible for a mere slip of paper. A letter would never find him, whereas he knew exactly where to find her.

So Famke merely sat and waited for life to begin again.

[ . . . ] a pleasant park, originally laid out in the French style but afterwards altered in accordance with English taste. It contains two cafés, a pavilion for the sale of mineral waters, etc., and is a great resort of nurses and children.

K. B
AEDEKER
,
N
ORTHERN
G
ERMANY
(W
ITH EXCURSIONS, ETC
.)

Finally, there came the day Famke had food only to last out the week, and no money after that. She would have to find work. But who would engage a seventeen-year-old orphan who'd run out on her last position? She had no references, no friends, no way of earning next week's beans and bread without selling herself.

NÃ¥
, she had one friend. With her last
Øre
she bought a sheet of writing paper and a pencil, and she wrote to Sister Birgit.

They met outside the King's Garden. Birgit had stolen a few minutes by announcing a trip to the market; she carried an old basket heavy with withered apples and potatoes. Trying to please, Famke took the basket as she and Birgit walked slowly before the big fence, just in sight of the bronze statue of Hans Andersen.

They started with tentative greetings, restrained but affectionate on both sides. Birgit gave news of the orphanage. Since last she'd seen Famke, Jesus had lost a number of brides: Several sisters, including Saint Bernard, had coughed their way to the next world. It seemed poverty and hard work were taking their toll on the convent's notoriously weak lungs; the doctors were saying it was the curse of urban living and its attendant excitement, but what were they to do? They had nowhere else to go.

Famke gave a shiver of combined sorrow and fear for her own life. If even Sister Saint Bernard had died of the chest, what would become of her?
But she expressed only an unselfish sorrow, and Birgit received it with an approving smile.

Then Famke told her story. She told it simply and plainly, describing what she had done and how she had lived, and the great passion that had driven her to it all. “I let this man see me naked,” she said. “I let him paint me. I let him . . . touch me . . .”

Birgit listened with the silence of a confessor, learned over many years. While Famke spoke, she had time to prepare her response. She folded her hands carefully, and the thin gold band glinted dully on her ring finger. When Famke stopped speaking, Birgit stopped walking.

“My dear,” she said, “did we not teach you that your body is a house for the Lord?”

Famke imagined a transparent house with a ghostly God peering through the roof. She saw herself now cowering naked in a corner.

Birgit added, as she had so many times in her conversations with Famke, “A poor girl has nothing but her virtue.”

“My virtue.” Forgetting her vision of the house, Famke raised her free hand and dropped it helplessly at her side. “What use is that? There's always some man who wants to steal it. So I gave mine to a man of my choice.”

“Did he promise to marry you?” Birgit asked.

“He promised me nothing,” said Famke, “but you see, I kept hoping . . . We were so happy together. And then he left.”

“Do you regret what you did?” Birgit asked, fearfully now.

Famke thought. It had never occurred to her. “My regret is that he left,” she said.

Birgit took a deep breath. “Then, if you are not repentant, I cannot help you.”

Famke stared. Her loving guardian, the woman who had tweezed glass out of her infant lips, who had given her a name—this woman was repudiating her, dismissing her as roundly as Albert had done. The sapphire eyes filled with tears.

“You are my only hope,” she whispered. She put her hands—a woman's hands now, lean and bony—on Birgit's two cheeks. Wetly she kissed Birgit's nose, just as the child Famke had done a decade before.

So Birgit found herself beginning to weep, too.

It was the tears as much as the kiss that did it. And perhaps something more—Birgit, who had not planned on being a nun before her parents delivered her to the Immaculate Heart, who admired the lush paintings in her illustrated Old Testament, could have harbored some secret admiration for what Famke had done. Her tears were tears of passion, too. When they were finished, she prayed. She forgave. And by the end of the week she had found Famke a new position.

One of the orphanage's chief patrons, an elderly importer named Jørgen Skatkammer, happened to be in need of a housemaid. Birgit worked secretly, behind the other nuns' backs, to secure the job for Famke.

“Be good this time,” she begged as, once more under Hans Andersen's blank eye, she gave Famke a letter of introduction and ten
Kroner
for a nest egg. “Don't stray. Someday you may meet a nice man and marry him”—Birgit knew it wasn't entirely moral to hold out this possibility after what Famke had done, but she had to give the girl some hope—“and you may put all this behind you.”

“But I want Albert!” Famke said, with the same stubborn head toss she'd used to demand the last bit of sugar in Birgit's pocket.

Birgit fingered the rosary occupying that pocket now. It was a cool day for late spring, and the beads felt like ice. “And yet this Albert does not . . . no, he doesn't sound a
pleasant
man.”

Famke, clutching the letter that was her salvation, allowed herself to laugh. “He is the most pleasant person I've known!”

“He left you behind, ruined, in order to pursue his own career.” Birgit did not add,
As well he might, after you showed how carelessly you value your virtue
.

Famke had no good answer even to what Birgit said aloud; she could only say, lamely, “But you did not see the way he used to look at me.”

Birgit sighed, thinking how little she knew of the world and how ill prepared she was to speak now. “Only do well for Herr Skatkammer,” she said. “And remember to pray.”

“I will pray,” Famke said, and added in her mind—
I'll pray that Albert will return
.

The Environs of Copenhagen, as well as the whole of the N. E. part of Zealand, are very attractive. The rich corn-fields, green pastures, and fine beech-forests, contrasting with the blue-green water of the Sound, are enlivened with numerous châteaux, country-houses, and villages.

K. B
AEDEKER
,
N
ORTHERN
G
ERMANY
(W
ITH EXCURSIONS, ETC
.
)

Famke realized she was lucky to have this position. Herr Jørgen Skatkammer's house, in the pleasant suburb of Hellerup, was large and well run; she worked only twelve hours a day, shared a room with only one other girl, and was promised twice the wages she'd earned on the farm. The fireplaces had been converted to a coal furnace, so there were no hearths to clean. And certainly no goose pens or pigs, no livestock at all except some stuffed birds of paradise and an overweight white cat that spent most of its time sleeping.

There was also no Fru Skatkammer, so Famke took orders from the raw-boned, downy-lipped housekeeper, Frøken Grubbe, who was firm but not cruel and reminded her of Sister Saint Bernard on a good day. She instructed Famke to brush and rebraid her hair every morning, and to purchase a new blouse. Famke got one nearly new from a stall at the local market, parting with five of Sister Birgit's precious
Kroner
.

Once she'd tidied her person, Famke's principal duties were washing dishes, folding the newspapers that arrived from all over the world, and dusting Herr Skatkammer's collections. By far the greatest claim on her time was this dusting. Each natural curiosity and
objet d'art
that Herr Skatkammer had bought for his shops was represented in his home as well; thus, if on one of his excursions he had acquired trilobites from the coast of Scotland, a large chunk of fossil-rich rock settled on his parlor shelves; if he'd brought glasswork from Venice, he hung a glass dagger on his dining
room wall. A trip to Egypt yielded a mummified crocodile, displayed along with its coffin and a stone tablet with gold hieroglyphics; at an auction in Boston, North America, Skatkammer furnished the already bulging chiffonier with a new set of silver and what Famke thought was a very ugly black-and-brown urn from a territory called Arizona. That urn alone did not show the coal dust that powdered every surface in the house—and yet it must be dusted. Each object was accompanied with a neatly lettered card identifying its origin and, on the back, its value at the time of purchase. These cards also had to be cleaned regularly, and woe betide the maid who left a careless fingerprint behind.

Famke did not notice the lack of paintings and other fine arts that traditionally furnished the well-appointed bourgeois home. Her months with Albert had not trained her to expect such things; to her mind, they belonged to a world apart from the world of work. And after the first few days, Herr Skatkammer's collections failed to register as exotic or even silly; she grew used to the fact and circumstance of wealth, just as she'd been used to the orphanage, the farm, and the studio. The collections were merely objects of dull labor, to be cared for in much the same way she'd looked after the tools on the farm. Even the carnivorous plants in the small conservatory became, after an initial fascination, just another chore; she spent a maddening hour each day catching flies to feed them.

The one collection of any lasting interest was the set of travel guides in Herr Skatkammer's study. As she dusted, Famke opened one from England and read a page or two here and there, to see what Albert might be seeing:
The walls of the National Gallery are surely unrivalled for sheer brilliance of the images hung . . . Each Saturday afternoon in summer, the fashionable and those who aspire to fashion pour into Hyde Park to take the air, to see others and to themselves be seen . . . The verdant nooks and valleys of Highgate offer pleasant and useful instruction, reminding us that even in the midst of life, we are in death
. . .

In her lassitude, Famke made some mistakes. An elaborately painted Russian vase cracked when she scrubbed it along with the breakfast dishes, and a Chinese rug shredded when she put it through the mangle. The holes were bad enough; but then, with her crude needlecraft, Famke took it upon herself to patch them. The result was a clotted web of strings and colors, barely suitable for the cat to lie on. In the housekeeper's opinion, this last
offense was grave enough to warrant a reproof from Herr Skatkammer himself.

In the two weeks she'd been there, Famke had not met her employer, though she had seen him as she passed silently by an open door or two. He was always absorbed in his collections and never gave a glance to the ghostly presence who cared for them. Following orders, Famke washed her face and hands, put on a clean cap, and presented herself in Skatkammer's study.