‘In all likelihood you’ll barely be able to see that the
little lady and her apple have had their life prolonged,
when we meet again.’
‘It’s an orange.’
The restorer looked down at the picture. Turned it this
way and that with minimal movements.
‘You are quite right. A rather pale orange. I promise
you—it will continue to be an orange! But the eyes. Such a
little girl’s eyes should be white, isn’t that so? She wasn’t
painted with advanced conjunctivitis. You know what—
perhaps you’re thinking this will be expensive, but in
actual fact I’ll do it for free, for I have quite lost my heart
to our little friend, and frankly we can let the public purse
pay for the hours I put in.’
‘I hadn’t thought about the money’, Jytte heard herself
reply. Halfway through the sentence she tried to make it
sound less angry. The restorer nodded slowly, glancing a
couple of times from the picture he held in his hands to
Jytte, as though comparing the two.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2014, SPi
282 n Anders Bodelsen
‘No need to worry’, he said.
He placed the picture on the table and pulled it towards
him.
‘What do you think the painter was paid by the hour
for this picture?’
Jytte shook her head uncertainly. His hands now
grasped the picture frame in a very possessive way. The
smell of the chemicals made her nostrils itch, but the
expected sneeze failed to come. It would be impossible
now for her to take the picture away from him and put it
back in the plastic bag, she thought.
‘Whereas the little girl’, said the restorer. ‘It’s not hard
to guess what the little girl’s reward was for sitting days on
end for the painter. Isn’t that so?’
Jytte found she had got to her feet, but her legs weren’t
supporting her as they should.
‘She got the orange of course, and ate it!’ said the
restorer without letting go of Jytte with his smiling eyes.
It would be more than a month before Jytte was to see
her great-great-grandmother again. Not until one day in
August did the restorer call to say the picture was ready for
collection. He said no more than that on the phone, and
Jytte couldn’t bring herself to ask the relevant question.
Instead she drove into town to collect the picture.
He received her in the museum foyer with a completely
neutral expression, and she followed after him down the
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2014, SPi
Amelie’s Eyes n 283
corridors, down the narrow perforated metal spiral stair-
case which again snapped at her heels. Then into his
workshop, where the whiff of chemicals once again made
her nostrils itch.
‘Now where has the little lady got to?’ he said, and went
around lifting up any number of pictures. Then he found
her, and laid her on the table between them so that for the
present she faced his way. He put a magnifying glass to his
eye and pulled a lamp down over the picture, apparently to
check one last time that he had not been mistaken.
Then he turned the picture round, pushing it towards
Jytte with one hand and passing her the magnifying glass
with the other. Jytte accepted the magnifying glass, but
immediately put it down on the table.
‘What’s happened to the picture?’ she said.
‘Happened?’
‘You cleaned it?’
‘Not really. Just what we agreed. The very worst of the
dirt.’
‘But the eyes.’
‘Yes?’
‘Aren’t they completely wrong?’
‘Perhaps they are a tiny bit more how the painter
painted them. Do you really think they’ve changed?’
Jytte stared at the hard eyes.
‘It just isn’t the same girl’, she said.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2014, SPi
284 n Anders Bodelsen
The restorer sat there regarding her for a bit in silence.
‘Normally one would remove more’, he said. ‘Seeing
one was doing it anyway. But as for the signature, because
that after all was what we wanted to throw a little more
light on . . . have a look for yourself with the magnifying
glass.’
Jytte delayed the moment. She tried to meet her great-
great-grandmother’s new and strangely indignant gaze.
Then she held the magnifying glass to her eye and studied
the signature.
‘I make it out to be Conrad Hansen’, said the restorer.
‘And who is he?’ Jytte heard herself ask. Conrad was
not something he ‘made out’, but very definitely the name
now written in the corner.
‘If you ask me—an absolutely brilliant artist.’
‘But . . . ’
‘I haven’t been able to find out a thing about him. But
that doesn’t make him any the worse. Of course I’m a
restorer, not an arbiter of taste, but personally I think—’
He smiled at Jytte.
‘Personally I think this picture is rather too good to be a
Constantin Hansen. Personally I’ve always found his por-
traits a little wooden. Over the years there were a lot of
commissions, bread-and-butter work, and at times quite a
bit of assembly line production. And the man got old and
tired. While this unknown artist . . . ’
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2014, SPi
Amelie’s Eyes n 285
The restorer turned the picture round so that he could
again admire it for himself.
‘This man certainly wasn’t tired.’
‘But what have you done to her eyes?’
‘Just gone over them with the minutest amount of
cleaning fluid on the brush. I honestly believe at the very
most it’s the strong light from the lamp here.’
He pushed the lamp away and got up. But little Ame-
lie’s eyes did not change; they continued to gaze up at Jytte,
angry and indignant, until she preferred to look away.
‘Will you still send it to auction?’ asked the restorer
quietly.
‘It was never meant to go to auction. It’s a family
portrait.’
‘It’s definitely not without value. It’s certainly worth
something—on the open market as well. You don’t need to
get angry just because I tell you so!’
‘Can you make it look like it did before?’ asked Jytte.
The restorer slowly shook his head.
Of course he couldn’t do that.
‘How much do I owe you?’ said Jytte.
‘Not a penny. As I told you before. It’s been a pleasure
to work with the little girl. And I believe it won’t be long
before you get used to the fact she is free of the worst of the
tobacco smoke and varnish.’
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2014, SPi
286 n Anders Bodelsen
He wrapped the picture and Jytte went off with it. At
home she left it in its packaging until Leif got back from
work. Then they both studied it under the di
ning table
lamp.
‘Conrad!’ said Leif and laughed. ‘Just a couple of letters
out, what?’
‘That’s not the point. It’s the eyes. Look how she’s
staring at us!’
‘If you hadn’t told me it had been cleaned, I simply
wouldn’t have noticed.’
‘Can’t you see—she’s totally changed?’
‘Oh lord. Let’s look on the positive side. We avoid
raising the insurance and having to put burglar alarms
all over the house. Should we put her back again?’
Jytte hesitated. But of course they should. Amelie went
back over the sewing table which had once been hers. Leif
stood for a moment, looking at her.
‘Welcome back,’ he said gently and turned away.
As she hung there, between the two west windows, not
much light fell on her. But even in the twilight, before they
lit the lamps in the living room, Jytte felt that her eyes were
following the people in the room with a new attention,
which all the time bordered on hostility.
‘We could move her’, she said while they were laying
the table.
‘Where to?’
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2014, SPi
Amelie’s Eyes n 287
That was the nub. Preferably gone altogether. Leif
stopped in the middle of laying the table and looked over
at her.
‘Now I can’t see any difference at all’, he said. He lifted
a glass. ‘Welcome back where you belong’, he saluted her.
But Jytte did see a difference. And the next day too, and
the day after that. The little girl had been given new eyes,
and she kept them. Angry, suspicious eyes, as though she
would never again feel safe amongst her descendants.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2014, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2014, SPi
Conversation
One Night in
Copenhagen
Karen Blixen
It was raining in Copenhagen one November night of the
year 1767. The moon was up and well into its second
quarter—at intervals, when the rain abated as though
pausing between two verses of an endless song, its pale,
painfully upended mask showed high in the sky behind
layer upon layer of shifting copper-green vapours. Then
the rain’s dirge resumed, the moon mask would retreat
deep into space, and only the lamps in the streets and an
odd window here and there would be discernible amid the
dark mass of houses, like phosphorescent jellyfish at the
bottom of the sea.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2014, SPi
290 n Karen Blixen
There was still some sporadic night traffic in the
streets. Out to sea, a few solid solitary barques headed
homewards, and restless privateers and buccaneers on
dubious errands beat upwind between black crags stream-
ing with wet. A chaise was hailed, took aboard its load and
lurched off toward a destination deep in the city and the
night. A heavily gilded coach with winking torches, a
coachman high up on the box, footmen behind and pre-
cious contents inside, pulled away from a reception,
wheels spraying rain water and street filth to all sides as
the spirited horses’ trotting hooves struck long sparks
from the cobblestones.
In the narrow streets and lanes Copenhagen night
life continued in high spirits. Music and song filled the
air to the steady accompaniment of revelry and rowdy
disputation.
Suddenly the hubbub increased, a brawl had broken
out like a fire. Many voices were raised, smashed window
panes tinkled on the pavement, and heavy objects hurled
from one or two storeys above crashed and thumped down
on top of them. Shouts and gales of laughter mingled in a
whirling maelstrom from the middle of which women’s
cascading shrieks soared high into the air.
Two Copenhagen burghers, one tall and thin, the other
shorter and big-bellied, with their greatcoat collars turned
up and their hats pulled down over their ears and a lad
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2014, SPi
Conversation One Night in Copenhagen n 291
with a lantern preceding them, paused a little way into the
alley. The rain had driven them to take this short cut
home, and they had become so absorbed in talk of vessels
rounding Africa laden with spices for Copenhagen that a
thin sweet wake of cinnamon and vanilla seemed to trail
after them through the alleyway’s restless swell of stenches.
As the uproar ahead grew louder and nearer they had told
the lad with the lantern to halt, and now together they
peered pensively down the lane in the direction of a house
whose door stood open and around which pressed a howl-
ing wrestling mass; and at the spectacle their faces grew
longer and their limbs heavier. But they said not a word.
For it was by no means certain that this time the
disturbance ahead of them was one more late-night riot
for which one could call upon the forces of law and order,
and the wrath of God. On the contrary, it almost certainly
spelled their shame and sorrow. The mob down there in
the alley was no rabble—these were important folk, fine
gentlemen from the court bent on wreaking havoc. And it
was not impossible, sadly all too likely, that the country’s
young king himself, still barely more than a boy, was
running around at the head of them.
Aye, still barely more than a boy, and one whom it was
rumoured had been raised excessively severely. Loyal sub-
jects could be expected to turn a blind eye to a royal
youth’s excesses. All the same, he did after all have his
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2014, SPi
292 n Karen Blixen
creamy pink young English queen back home in the pal-
ace, who within but two months would be delivered, God
willing, of a crown prince for his father’s two hereditary
realms. Yet here he was, raving in the night, fuddled and
wild with wine, helping his mistress wreak revenge on
other women of her profession with whom she had old
scores to settle. What evil folk they all were, these servants
and favourites of the king, these counts and equerries and
royal councillors, leading astray the Lord’s anointed, a
beloved dead mother’s son. The two Copenhageners called
to mind, as their feet froze where they stood, the story of
how only recently on a night such as this in a scuffle with
the city’s watchmen this young king by the grace of God
had collected a black eye and in return had personally
borne off to his palace a spiked mace by way of a trophy.
What was said abroad these days about Denmark and
Norway’s sovereign? As for his own people who over
many hundreds of years had prided themselves on their
loyalty to their King and his house, how in the humility of
their hearts were they to put up with such a wretched state
of affairs?
Still not uttering a word, b
oth mutely swallowed their
own and their country’s disgrace. They, at least, would
remain silent as the grave.
A long authoritative blast from a watchman’s whistle
cut through the din. The brawl broke up, and within two
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2014, SPi
Conversation One Night in Copenhagen n 293
minutes had dispersed in all directions. Some crashes and
shouts, the sound of a yard door banging to, and a rush of
running feet followed the flare-up. Light from a window
for an instant caught the rose lining of a cape and caressed
a speeding turquoise silk ribbon, and a moment later the
street lamp lit up the braid on a naval officer’s uniform
which appeared to enclose very round young limbs.
A laughing exclamation in French was flung over a re-
treating shoulder, and a handful of biting saucy Danish
oaths were hurled back in return. Then colours and voices
spilled into the side lanes, and the adventure was over.
Now only a pair of heavy watchmen’s cloaks were outlined
against the hazy radiance of the open street door.
The two burghers continued on their way, directing
their steps around the nearest corner and their thoughts
back to happier waters, to the Cape of Good Hope and the
price of pepper and nutmeg. The faint stream of fragrance
behind them acquired a dash of stoical self-righteousness.
A very young man, a fine little figure in a heavy cloak,
who in the confusion had become separated from his
companions, had lost his way in a long series of back
yards, passageways, and steps. He looked round him,
ran, looked round again, and finally fetched up on the
topmost landing of a steep, narrow, mouldering staircase.
Here he halted, breathless from the ascent, remaining on
his feet with his small person pressed into a corner. After
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/8/2014, SPi
294 n Karen Blixen
regaining his breath a little, his hands went to his throat to
undo the clasp of his cloak. In one hand he held a naked
rapier, the sheath was gone and the weapon was in his way.
He set it down, reeling a little as he did so. Still unable to
loosen the clasp, he groped about for a while with out-
spread fingers on the filthy floor before retrieving the hilt.
Once it was back in his hand, he made a few passes in the
air with the blade. During all this he remained as silent as a
fish, no complaints or oaths, no sound at all escaped him.
Copenhagen Tales Page 24