Copenhagen Tales

by Helen Constantine

  place, and the yellowish bit of wall was finally covered

  again.

  The guests left early. Leif gave Jytte a hand filling the

  dishwasher; he had fixed himself a whisky and water and

  was sitting on the kitchen table, tapping his nails against

  the side of the glass.

  ‘Great things are about to happen’, he said.

  He emptied the glass and put it in the machine a

  moment before Jytte banged the door shut and started it.

  ‘They’re nice’, he said. ‘Both of them. We could get to

  be friends with them.’

  While he was in the bathroom, Jytte went back down to

  the living room. She stood there a while, gazing into her

  seven-year-old great-great-grandmother’s eyes. Were they

  sharp? She didn’t think so. The gaze was strong, but not

  sharp. If anything it was mild. Amelie was a very obedient

  little girl. She looked the painter in the eye firmly but

  kindly.

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  Amelie’s Eyes n 271

  In her right hand, which rested on a red tablecloth,

  Amelie held an apple—or was it an orange? The child’s

  hand gently squeezed the fruit, which very probably never

  got eaten.

  ‘Maybe we should have it cleaned’, thought Jytte.

  She tore herself away, but turned round at the door.

  She could just make out Amelie’s eyes. From this distance

  it could perhaps be said the gaze was ‘sharp’.

  Curious?

  Jytte turned off the light and went upstairs.

  The summer rain drummed against the fabric roof of

  her 2CV when, a couple of days later, Jytte drove the

  picture into Copenhagen. She had wrapped it in brown

  paper and was already regretting she hadn’t put it in a

  plastic bag, for the roof wasn’t completely watertight and a

  couple of raindrops were running along the inside and

  threatening to drip right on to the brown paper parcel

  lying on the back seat. While she had to stop for the red

  light in Glostrup, she quickly pulled off her raincoat and

  spread it over the parcel.

  In Bredgade she couldn’t find a parking space, she had

  to go all the way to the Marble Church to get rid of the car.

  There she stood in the heavy summer rain with the parcel

  inside the raincoat under her arm. She started running,

  stumbled on the pavement and only just managed not to

  fall or lose her grip on the tightly rolled coat with the

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  picture inside. With beating heart she continued more

  steadily on her way; the rain was milder now, she just

  hoped she wouldn’t look in too much of a state when she

  had to show the picture.

  She had to sit and wait a while with the parcel in her

  lap. You were served in turn at a counter, she had chosen a

  busy day. At the counter the people from the auction

  house assessed what was put in front of them. A woman

  put a wonderful and incredibly large doll on the counter,

  and demonstrated to an interested young man how the

  doll could say ‘Mama!’ when you leaned it back, while at

  the same time it closed one eyelid.

  ‘We haven’t tried to repair the other one’, she said.

  ‘You mustn’t even think of doing so’, answered the

  man. ‘That’s expert work.’

  Another woman placed a whole set of pretty little

  boxes on the counter, opened them one by one and held

  jewels up to the light. Two men left an enormous card-

  board box standing on the floor but revealed its contents, a

  gigantic chandelier with eight amber-coloured PH-shades.

  A young man in a soaking wet Marco Polo jersey got

  the thumbs down for a picture of Kongens Nytorv. ‘It’s a

  lovely picture’, said the lady who kept rotating it in her

  hands, ‘very well painted, but it’s not a Paul Fischer. The

  tram is too recent . . . ’

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  Amelie’s Eyes n 273

  In the end the young man shoved the painting under

  his arm and stomped out.

  Now it was Jytte’s turn. She put the parcel on the

  counter and opened it. The young man picked up the

  picture and held it at arm’s length.

  He stood there for an exceptionally long time, studying

  it. Then he looked round toward the back of the room,

  caught the eye of an older man and with a nod of the head

  summoned him over.

  The older man, who was very well dressed and very tall,

  came and stood behind the young one and inspected

  Jytte’s great-great-grandmother. The two exchanged a

  glance, and Jytte became aware that it had gone very

  quiet everywhere behind the counter.

  The lady who had discovered the wrong tram in the

  painting of Kongens Nytorv took a couple of steps to the

  side, leaving a man with a bronze clock to his own devices

  in order to have a look as well.

  For a moment the silence was so total that Jytte could

  hear the rain at the windows.

  ‘It’s not that I want to sell the picture’, she said softly.

  ‘But I’ve been told I ought to have it valued.’

  And when the two men and the lady failed to look up

  from the picture, she added:

  ‘For the insurance.’

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  274 n Anders Bodelsen

  ‘Yes’, said the man who had joined them, ‘that would

  be wise.’

  Finally he looked up at Jytte.

  ‘Do you have any idea yourself who the painter might

  be?’ he asked.

  ‘No. But she is my great-great-grandmother. And

  recently we had a guest who was of the opinion—’

  The man with the bronze clock coughed discreetly.

  ‘That it could be a good painter’, Jytte finished.

  ‘That’s for sure’, said the tall man who by now had

  taken control of proceedings. ‘So good that we would like

  to be allowed to keep the picture for a couple of days. The

  gentleman whose verdict we would like to hear happens to

  be in London, but he’s coming back at the weekend. May

  we be allowed to keep it that long?’

  The man with the bronze clock had stopped clearing

  his throat. He had edged closer and was now also peering

  at Amelie’s head.

  ‘If you dare leave it with us’, said the tall man, smiling.

  A little later Jytte was on her way out of the room with

  a receipt. She was starting to feel cold now. She turned

  round at the door and saw how the little portrait was being

  very carefully carried into an office. In the big man’s hands

  it looked very small, but Jytte managed to catch one last

  glimpse of her great-great-grandmother’s strong grey eyes.

  Then a door closed, and Jytte walked down the steps.

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  In Bredgade she unrolled her raincoat and put it on.

  Now she was shivering with cold, and she walked as fast as

  she could to warm herself up.
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  A week later she was reunited with her great-great-

  grandmother in the office of the tall auctioneer. He made

  no secret of the fact he had had it hanging in such a way

  that he could see it from his desk. He took it off the wall,

  held it for a moment in the light from the window, and

  then placed it on the table between Jytte and himself.

  ‘Well’, he said, ‘all week I have enjoyed the lovely little

  girl. Do sit down, please. Now, personally I am fairly

  certain that the painter is . . . ’—he lowered his voice—‘is

  Constantin Hansen. But our expert is a little less certain.

  He is more inclined to say: Constantin Hansen, question

  mark. And somehow that is not quite so satisfactory.

  Cigarette?’

  Jytte shook her head. The very polite man turned the

  picture so that Jytte could see it the right way up. It was a

  little smaller than Jytte remembered, also a little darker, and

  it suddenly struck Jytte that little Amelie’s hand was squeez-

  ing the orange as though she feared she might lose it.

  ‘Unfortunately our expert has a way of being right’,

  said the auctioneer. ‘But we were in agreement about one

  thing. In order to value the picture correctly we need to be

  able to study the signature, which we believe is to be found

  in the bottom righthand corner. That corner needs to be

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  carefully cleaned, and in that connection one might sug-

  gest . . . a very gentle cleaning of the whole picture. What

  would you say to that idea?’

  ‘I can’t imagine the picture any different to how it is.’

  ‘Not even a little closer to how it actually was, when the

  painter painted it?’ Jytte looked at the kind man,

  defenceless.

  ‘We have a good friend at the National Museum of Art,

  who occasionally, purely for his own pleasure, occupies

  himself with an interesting picture’, he said. ‘We’ve had a

  word with him. We suggest you now carry off your great-

  great-grandmother and entrust her to him for a couple of

  days. Perhaps he can take photos through the old varnish

  with infrared rays or whatever kind of devilry he uses. But

  we think . . . oh dear, are you unwell?’

  ‘Just a cold.’

  Jytte stood up and gripped the back of the chair very

  firmly.

  ‘One must listen to the experts’, she said resolutely.

  ‘Not at all.’ The tall man also stood up, and smiled.

  ‘You listen to your heart. But you came for some advice—’

  The tall man turned a large book her way, which he

  had opened beforehand. He showed Jytte a reproduction

  of an Italian scene, and directed her gaze down into the

  corner. ‘This is a definite Constantin Hansen. It sold for

  three-quarters of a million at Sotheby’s in London a couple

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  Amelie’s Eyes n 277

  of years ago. It would fetch more today. And here we have

  his signature, or one of them. His first name he shortens to

  Const. The surname, which . . . ’—the tall man looked as

  though he felt he might be speaking out of turn but

  couldn’t stop now in mid-sentence—‘which he may not

  have been quite so proud of, he limits to a capital H. Const.

  H. It is something of that nature we think we can make out

  very faintly in the corner beneath your charming great-

  great-grandmother. The painting could not be any lovelier

  than it is, but it would satisfy me personally—and perhaps

  annoy our expert a bit—if it were the abbreviated first

  name and the somewhat . . . bare capital H hiding there in

  the corner!’

  The picture was carefully packaged up and placed in a

  very elegant plastic bag, before Jytte was sent off. Today

  the wrapping was not so necessary, as a heat wave had

  replaced the summer rain. Jytte risked rolling back the

  2CV’s fabric roof after depositing her great-great-grand-

  mother in the plastic bag on the floor by the back seat—at

  least it couldn’t fall from there. She drove to the National

  Museum of Art, where she hadn’t been since school when

  her class had visited a basement full of grubby plaster casts.

  The lilacs were in bloom around the museum. Jytte

  stood for a moment with the picture under her arm staring

  straight ahead at the vast building bathed in the oversweet

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  278 n Anders Bodelsen

  scent of lilac. She turned round and stood with her back to

  the museum. Turned back again and walked swiftly on.

  Shortly after, she was following a museum attendant—

  who kept glancing back at the plastic bag as if he yearned

  to peer inside to make sure it didn’t contain a bomb—

  down a steep and narrow spiral staircase whose perforated

  metal steps kept threatening to snag her heels. Then along

  some long corridors through a veritable labyrinth before

  she was finally deposited in front of a prisonlike iron door.

  The museum attendant stepped inside and shut the door,

  so that for a moment she found herself alone in the

  corridor waiting for her next sneeze to come. Then she

  was admitted to a room which was as light as the corridor

  had been dark. A man in a blue smock greeted her with an

  iron handshake which she could still feel several minutes

  later. His hand felt like one large icy bone. He relieved her

  of the bag and fished out the contents, whistled a short

  sequence of three or four notes, and looked her in the eye

  with a gaze as firm as his right handshake.

  ‘Good’, he said. ‘So now let’s see if we can lighten things

  up a bit here—’

  ‘Just the signature.’

  The young man eyed Jytte with his penetrating stare.

  He cautiously ran a finger across the canvas, hummed, fell

  silent, hummed again. Studied his dusty forefinger under

  the light from a powerful lamp, and with a little wave of

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  Amelie’s Eyes n 279

  the hand motioned to Jytte to sit down. After this he

  produced a couple of paint brushes which he dexterously

  arranged between the fingers of his left hand. He set three

  small glasses containing a clear liquid on the table.

  There was a sharp chemical odour in the room, which

  made Jytte think of brain damage and of the local cleaners

  which had had to close down since the husband and wife

  who worked there had died within months of each other.

  The man in the blue smock dipped a brush into a glass, let

  a few drops run off, and looked up at Jytte.

  ‘Listen’, he said, ‘I won’t be able to get it done today. All

  I can do is see how far there is to go. And it’s only the

  varnish we’ll just begin to lift, isn’t that so?’

  With the almost dry brush he carefully touched the

  canvas where the signature was lurking. The movements

  of his hand were light and precise. After each stroke he
>
  painstakingly studied both the brush and the place it had

  touched. He was an expert. Jytte got through a sneeze and

  sat a little further back in her chair. The restorer reached

  for the next brush, which he dipped in the next glass and

  again carefully squeezed almost dry before using it in the

  same small spot.

  ‘Nope,’ he said after working on the place for a couple

  of wordless minutes. ‘It won’t budge—’

  He moved on to the third brush, the third liquid. This

  time he squeezed the brush a little less dry. As he swung it

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  280 n Anders Bodelsen

  in over the canvas a phone in the room rang and he lost

  concentration for a fraction of a second. A drop fell from

  the brush. Jytte thought it fell so slowly that she could

  follow it in its fall. It settled like a tear in the corner under Amelie’s right eye.

  The young man laughed and quickly wiped away the

  drop with a rag. He had caught the panic in Jytte’s eyes, for

  he laughed again very briefly, but for the first time in an

  almost friendly fashion.

  ‘It’ll take more than that’, he said.

  Again he went to work for a couple of minutes, con-

  centrating with the brush down in the corner where the

  signature was supposedly hiding. Then he abruptly stood

  up and set all the brushes on a small tray.

  ‘We’ll get there’, he said. ‘But there’s quite a way to go.

  At least I’ve made a start.’

  He picked out the last of the paint brushes and showed

  Jytte how the light brush hairs had turned a pale grey.

  ‘A hundred years of dust and tobacco smoke.’

  ‘Only a hundred years?’

  ‘Or a little more. But there is a signature, and we’ll get

  to it. The question is—’

  He raised the picture.

  ‘We really ought to give the whole painting a gentle

  clean. Believe me, it will be all the better for it.’

  ‘It mustn’t be any different. The eyes—’

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  Amelie’s Eyes n 281

  ‘I’m not talking about butchery. I’m actually talking

  about protecting the little lady. She is suffering. This kind

  of rubbish works away at a picture, and ends up breaking it

  down. In . . . in a hundred years, or five hundred . . . ’

  Jytte sneezed again. It appeared to her the man contra-

  dicted himself when, after handing her a very soft, lush

  tissue from a box on his table, he went on to say: