Читать книгу Breath and Bones - Susan Cokal - Страница 17

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. BAEDEKER,

NORTHERN GERMANY (WITH 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.

He sat behind a large mahogany desk, surrounded by papers and fountain pens, with the white cat asleep in his lap. Asian masks leered over his plump form in its ill-fitting suit, and when Famke walked in, his mouth dropped open in unconscious imitation of the mask directly behind him.

“I am very sorry,” Famke said. Never having worked in such a fine house, she thought perhaps she was supposed to speak first in such a situation. She heard the faint tone of a bell. “Did I startle you?”

The mouth snapped shut. “No,” he said. “Not quite.” He put on a pair of spectacles and peered at her through them. A vein throbbed in his bald pate, but he said nothing.

She thought Herr Skatkammer must be very angry indeed. She curtsied as the nuns had taught her. “I apologize for spoiling the carpet. I understand my wages will be reduced.” Wages hardly seemed to matter; there was nothing she wanted to buy.

“It was a valuable rug,” he said, not responding to the matter of the wages. “But come closer.”

Obediently, Famke stepped forward, wondering if he planned to slap her. But he merely gazed, as in another land he might have gazed upon a silk tapestry or marble carving, until she realized that this house posed some of the same dangers that the farm had.

“You are very beautiful,” Herr Skatkammer said at last, exhaling. His breath carried the bitterness of one who could not sleep without a stiff dose of laudanum. Though he had hardly moved, the white cat woke with a sudden start and jumped to the floor.

Virtue, Famke thought. She said nothing.

“You are from the Immaculate Heart orphanage?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?”

Before she could answer—she would have had to answer, and her answer would have led to further and perhaps perilous conversation—there came a discreet knock on the door.

Herr Skatkammer removed his glasses. “Yes,” he called in some irritation.

“Herr Skatkammer, the Saints are here for you.” Frøken Grubbe cracked open the door. “Shall I send them to the parlor?”

“No, no, bring them in here,” he said with a last lingering look at the new maid. “And tea. And some pastries.”

Mystified, Famke followed the housekeeper downstairs. “What are these saints?” she asked, but Frøken Grubbe gestured for silence.

Two somber, heavily bearded men were standing in the entryway.

Not those plates,” Frøken Grubbe snapped, more harshly than was necessary. “Herr Skatkammer uses the Flora Danica for these guests—though why he honors them, I don’t know.” With an air of long-tried patience, she unlocked a dark cabinet that held the hundred-year-old china depicting flowers native to Denmark. It reminded Famke of the carriage Albert hired the day he whisked her away from Dragør, and she was glad to touch it.

“Why did you call the men saints?” Famke asked as she set out the plates. Frøken Grubbe was slicing buttery almond Wienerbrød, and Famke’s mouth watered. But she knew it was pointless even to imagine what such a treat might taste like, so she put her mind to other questions.

“That’s what they call themselves,” said Grubbe, still irritable. “They are from America”—as if that settled the matter.

“Are they importers, too?”

The kettle boiled; Frøken Grubbe lifted it off the stove and poured it over the tea leaves in the Flora Danica pot. “In a manner of speaking. They import people. They convert good Scandinavians to their religion and then take them to a desert that they say is God’s chosen land.”

“Slavers?” Famke asked in fascinated horror.

“No one knows,” Frøken Grubbe admitted, warming to her subject as the tea steeped. Her upper lip looked darker as it dampened with steam. “But they are said to marry many women and to make them participate in secret rituals.”

Famke thought of those bushy, moustacheless beards and shivered. “What do they want with Herr Skatkammer?”

“They want,” came the ominous answer, “to convert him. They believe that as a Catholic among Lutherans, he is vulnerable. If they succeed, they will convince him to finance passage for their converts, to let them sail on his ships and to give them money—more than a decade’s wages for you and me, most likely. They think nothing of asking, and he might think nothing of giving it.”

Famke felt a twinge of resentment that brought her into communion with Frøken Grubbe; it was almost as if the Saints were stealing from the two of them.

“They’re a strange bunch,” Frøken Grubbe continued, fishing out the tea strainer. “They pray to God’s wife, though everyone with a right mind knows He is a bachelor.” She sighed, as if suddenly weary. Then she picked up the tray of steaming tea and sweetly fragrant pastries. “I will bring this upstairs,” she said with a sharp look at Famke. “I think it’s best if you stay out of Herr Skatkammer’s sight.”

Famke was grateful to have found a protector in the spare and unlikely form of Frøken Grubbe. She avoided Skatkammer as best she could; and even when he asked for her by name, the housekeeper would send another maid in her place or do the errand herself.

Eventually Famke realized that Frøken Grubbe’s cooperation could point in only one direction. She loves him, Famke thought, and was astonished. She felt as if she’d received a revelation: At the advanced age of nearly forty, and suffering a lack of personal charms, a woman could fall in love. That this particular woman was besotted with an even less attractive and more aged employer, and hoped he would come to love her as well—Famke thought it very sad indeed.

What was more, the housekeeper’s unhappy story made Famke realize her days in the mansion could well be numbered as the hairs on her head. Even the kindest of women—and Frøken Grubbe certainly was not that—would not harbor the object of a beloved’s lust for long. Indeed, her reproofs of Famke’s mistakes were becoming sharper and sharper, and once or twice Famke found that after the other servants had eaten there was no meat for her own dinner. She made herself adopt the meek manners of the convent and tried to please Frøken Grubbe whenever possible. This was not a job a girl should throw away, especially not a girl who’d lost her virtue.

Famke’s virtue remained unmourned, nearly unremembered except for the two mementos of the man who had taken the last shreds of that ephemeral purity from her: the silver tinderbox and the sketch he had made of her in Dragør nearly a year before. She would not tack it to this wall, but when she had a moment and a candle and her bedmate was sleeping, Famke liked to unroll the delicate cylinder of it and spread it on her own bed. She still thought it was Albert’s finest work. There was always some new detail to be noticed: a wrinkle in the ribbons of the cap so carelessly shoved back from her head, a bend in the curls that escaped from her braids, a spark of sunlight in her eyes. And finally, as a special treat, Famke might turn the paper over and read the words written there—words she had not discovered until she unpinned the sketch from Fru Strand’s wall and rolled it up to come to Skatkammer’s. Albert must have written them just before he left:

To my sweet, lovely Famke, who rescued her face and my fate from the fire—

Had we but world enough and time, this parting, darling, would be no crime.

Best regards from a rushing heart,

A. C.

They were beautiful words, words that—she thought—made it plain he did not wish to leave her. It was only the uncertainty of his own future that kept him from begging her to be his permanently. Had she but means, she might have gone to him and said that none of the rest mattered . . .

These thoughts never failed to make her weep, until, romantically, she doused the candle with her tears.