Sofie & Cecilia

Home > Other > Sofie & Cecilia > Page 19
Sofie & Cecilia Page 19

by Katherine Ashenburg


  Apparently they did. But his coolness took her aback.

  Their joy in the night was still there but it happened less frequently. That was probably normal, she thought. Lars was often out late in the evenings with his men friends. When he came home, she would turn to him in bed, but he usually slept almost immediately, worn out with food and drink.

  For the first few years of their marriage Cecilia had been so happy she did not miss having a child. None came, and after a while she wondered why. After another while, she wanted one, and then she wanted one very much.

  In the third spring of their time in Paris, she and Françoise were putting away the winter clothes and sorting through the lighter ones. Françoise must have made a small noise, a humph or a surprised start of some sort, that made Cecilia turn to her.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing, madame, nothing at all. I caught my fingernail on a stray thread.”

  But Cecilia was looking at her, and she could hardly hide whatever she had found in the inner pocket of Lars’s heavy brown suit. Although Cecilia hadn’t the faintest idea what the object was, she knew at once that it was not good. She kept her eye on Françoise while she considered out loud whether the weather would turn cold enough for her to wear her grey worsted walking costume again, and whether it should go to the cleaners before being put into the trunk. Finally, when she thought that enough time had elapsed, she sent Françoise out of the room for more sheets of tissue to lay between the clothes.

  At first, the small thing mystified her. A round, hard rim and a rubbery centre. She put it in her pocket and before Françoise returned, she laid Lars’s brown suit in the trunk. By the time they had finished for the day, she was frantic. Not with an idea, more a shapeless suspicion that was just beginning to take on contours. Her mother had never discussed with her what went on between a husband and wife. Nor had anything like this object ever appeared in her English novels. She was reading French novels by now, although she did not care for them greatly. Compared to the Brontës and Dickens, the French ones were cynical and heartless. But some of them alluded to ways and means—not that she understood these veiled references, but this object reminded her of those passages.

  She thought of consulting Otto Jespersen’s wife, a forthright woman from Lund. But she decided someone French would be better, partly because all the Scandinavian artists’ wives in Paris gossiped about each other, but more because somehow this seemed a French subject. Camille Desjardins was a better choice: her husband painted landscapes, and they lived in an apartment in the Marais with their three little girls. Cecilia arranged to visit her, and Mme Desjardins gave her jasmine tea. They talked about the Salon for a while, the work their husbands were exhibiting and the cheap place in Normandy the Desjardins had rented for the summer, close to the sea.

  Then Cecilia said she had a question. Mme Desjardins nodded, testing her cup for heat with her chubby fingers.

  “When a husband and wife do not want children, or perhaps do not want children at that time, is there anything…”

  She stopped. The Frenchwoman looked surprised. And uncertain. “My dear Mme Vogt. I had a different impression…”

  “No, no,” Cecilia said, “it’s not to do with my husband and me. It’s that I have been reading Zola, and he makes references to such possibilities. I’m afraid mothers in Sweden do not explain these things to their daughters.”

  She hoped her hostess would not ask which Zola novel she had been reading.

  “Ah, well then.” Mme Desjardins smiled ruefully, thinking where to begin. “None of them, I’m afraid, are very nice.”

  She could never remember getting home from the Desjardins’ flat. She must have walked, because she had a memory of Françoise clucking at her wet feet and sodden beaver cape, unpeeling her kid leather boots and taking them with the cape to the kitchen, after installing Cecilia in front of the fire with tea. Everyone was giving her tea today, she thought, as, like Camille Desjardins, she wrapped her hands around the cup’s fierce heat. She did not drink it. She was sure she would never be warm again. She felt hollowed out, as if her heart, lungs, belly had been suddenly emptied. And yet something deep inside was pumping hard.

  It was undeniable now, and yet she was counting on Lars to deny it. Only he could make it all disappear. What if he did not? While she decided how to proceed, she wondered what she had done wrong. She was too thin, her breasts were wrong, her breath smelled or her feet. That was it, her feet smelled. She took to washing them several times a day, as well as her teeth. The coated sensation of the tooth powder disgusted her. Lars could see something was wrong; she was no actress. She either clung to him in bed or turned away, saying she was exhausted.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She shook her head. Nothing.

  “Is it that there is no child yet? Because, you know, we will have one.”

  She shook her head.

  He got up, and soon she heard him whistling in the little room he used for a studio.

  Finally she grew tired of all the feeling. She wanted it to go away and, reckless, she did not much care how it ended. The next time he asked what was wrong, she went to her jewel case, took out the thing at the back of the bottom drawer and opened her hand to show it to him.

  At first, either he genuinely did not understand or he was a better liar than she realized.

  “My sweet girl, that is the last thing we need.”

  “I found it in your suit.”

  Even now they had not reached the point of no return. He could still tell her he was holding it for a friend, or it was part of a prank. Instead, he turned rather formal.

  “My dear, I beg your pardon. It was a momentary lapse.”

  She said nothing, not out of strategy but simple shock.

  “I was feeling discouraged,” he said, as if that explained it.

  Then, a little shamefaced, he extended his hands, with his elbows close to his sides, and took a step as if to embrace her. For an instant, she thought of the letter opener he had carved with her profile, but there was no time to reach it on her desk. She pushed him hard instead, and watched herself fly into a rage. Except that there was shrieking and not singing, it was like a scene from an opera that she had rehearsed again and again.

  “How dare you! How dare you? I am cleaning your dirty brushes and introducing you to my parents’ friends, and you betray me with a prostitute, or a model. What kind of stupid cliche are you living in? You promised to love me!”

  There was more, equally pointless, and finally she stopped because she was out of breath. He assured her that he did love her, that there was no intention to betray her, he begged her pardon again. But a look had passed across his face, just for a second, while she was screaming, a look that she did not understand for a long time. Much later, when she knew more, it came to her: a prostitute would have provided this object herself. Cecilia wasn’t sure about a model, but the fact that Lars had to provide the protection suggested that the woman was a lady, perhaps. Or a servant.

  A painting flashed through her mind. Years before, she had seen an early Renaissance Annunciation at some collector’s house, she had forgotten whose. Instead of the usual calm conversation between the angel Gabriel and a humble but willing girl, this painting was a scene of horrific ruckus and disarray. Gabriel, wearing bright blue and much larger than Mary, almost burst out of the frame. His ostentatious headdress and barely controllable wings, a frightening combination of muscle and feathers, were an affront to the girl’s quiet bedroom. In her shock, Mary had spilled her work—thread, needles and scissors—all over the floor, and her speech ribbon unfurled in a frightened stammer. She half-turned from Gabriel as if to say, “No. Please. This is a mistake. I was sitting here peacefully sewing and you want to turn my life upside down.” In some ways, not everything had ended badly for that timid Jewish girl, who enjoyed centuries of honour and devotion. But Cecilia could see no good whatever in this news for her. Something beyond her control had invaded h
er well-ordered room. Even if she thought she could restore its order, something more fundamental was broken.

  Lars looked sorry for her, told her that she was his beloved, his darling. And she told herself it would not happen again. But he never promised that.

  Next year, at Lars’s Stockholm exhibition, there was another small statue of a faun and nymph. This nymph was somewhat taller, closer in size to the faun, who resembled the earlier faun. But their bedroom had not seen the posture that was transporting them. Cecilia told herself, Stop looking at the statue. And she did. Her naivete was laughable: last year she had been dismayed that she recognized the doings of the faun and nymph, and now she was concerned that she did not. Well, she told herself. Surely an artist, of all people, uses his imagination.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  1899–1901

  AS THE CENTURY waned, the Vogts began building a house next to the churchyard in Siljevik. Once it was ready, they would move back to Sweden after almost six years in France. In 1899, Lars returned to Paris after their summer in the archipelago, but Cecilia stayed in Sweden for a few weeks to consult with the builders.

  When she returned to Paris, she found Lars working on dozens of oil studies and pencil sketches of a woman on the Place Pigalle. What preoccupied him was the contrast between the yellow-white electric light from a nearby cafe, and the gaslight on the street. The woman, who stood between the two kinds of illumination, wore brilliant crimson—either velvet or the softest merino wool—with a waist-length fur cape that tied at her neck with a big brown satin bow, and a muff. She had a way of holding her head, with a look of triumph and wounded pride, that told Cecilia the woman and Lars had been lovers. And that the affair was over. But perhaps she was wrong, because Lars said the model was a streetwalker. Not one of his usual types.

  Absorbed by the technical problems of the different lights—one relentless, flooding every corner, the other muted, soft and focused—Lars wanted to work around the clock. In the evening, when he had an idea, he pressed Cecilia into service as a model. She stood for hours, resting her arm with the muff against a pillar (standing in for a tree), and lifting her skirt with the other hand. Her head had to be inclined to the right, just so. She remembered the expression on the woman’s face, assured and resigned, a touch of bravado that signalled defeat, and imagined it on her own. Although Lars was not interested in her face. Finally, she said no.

  “I don’t want to pose any more.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m not a streetwalker.”

  “What are you saying? No one is going to recognize you. I’m keeping the model’s face; I just need you for the twist of the body and the way her skirt folds into two panels when she lifts it out of the mud.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not a prostitute.”

  “My dear woman, I don’t understand you. Are you becoming such a prude that you can’t help your husband?”

  “I would rather help you in other ways,” she said shortly, and walked away.

  * * *

  —

  The house in Siljevik was finished only a little behind schedule, thanks to Cecilia’s management, and they moved to Dalarna in 1900. Siljevik was Lars’s village, but he and Cecilia had never lived together in Sweden, except for summers in the archipelago. Absorbing as their years in Paris had been, it was time to return home. Lars’s career was at a stage where it could flourish in Sweden, and Cecilia looked forward to helping that happen. The ground was prepared: now their real life could begin. She concentrated on adjusting to life in a village, mastering the local dialect and, without trampling on too many sensitive feelings, trying to organize a library and a folk school. An orphanage would come next. She still half-hoped all this effort would make a difference in her marriage.

  In her first autumn in Siljevik, feeling sentimental and at loose ends, she went back to Stockholm for the Jewish New Year. Mamma was happy to see her, although she thought travelling so far to go to a service at the synagogue was a curious idea. Afterwards, the family convened for tea at Aunt Bette’s. Cecilia listened as her cousin Lena lamented over a burglary at her house when the family had been away for the summer. There was much shaking of heads and clucking while Lena, the expert on break-ins, chattered on.

  The first time, she said, was terrible. You felt violated, and that nothing would ever be the same again. But that turned out not to be true. The second time and, if you were unlucky, the third time, it felt more like a nuisance. There was a sleepy watchman to be fired, and broken glass and lost valuables, but you didn’t feel the wretched vulnerability that came with the first break-in.

  Cecilia passed China tea and seed cake, concentrating on the pattern on Aunt Bette’s cake plate, the Rorstrand one with innocent blue cornflowers scattered over a white surface. She wondered if having your marriage broken into was like a break-in at your house. The first time, or the first one she knew of, was an earthquake, a floor she had presumed was solid giving way without warning. She had thought it would never happen again, but even so, nothing would ever be the same. And she had been right that nothing would ever be the same—but right only about that. The second time, was it less or more painful? The second time meant that the first was not an aberration. And the third…What did the third time mean?

  Better not to think these thoughts. Better to commiserate with Lena or ask Aunt Bette if she still bought her mille-feuille from the patisserie on Drottninggatan. Her store of hope was diminishing, but she still had flickers that Lars’s escapades might end, or become very rare. She might never again be the centre and the whole of his desire—probably would not be—but in time he would see that no one would ever love him as she did. As she still did, and the panic and anger she felt at each unwelcome revelation only increased that love.

  * * *

  —

  In the second autumn they lived in Siljevik, Lars acquired a new dealer, and he and Cecilia went to Stockholm so that Lars could talk with him. By now Cecilia sat in on many of his business meetings, but Lars liked to have his first one with a dealer alone. That left her free for a few hours, so she headed for the National Museum. There was usually something interesting at the Salon. Making her way through the crowded galleries, she ran into Hanna Pauli and Sofie Olsson, who had come to see the work of a Danish woman they had studied with in Grez.

  “Mrs. Vogt,” Sofie said, looking awkward for just a minute. Cecilia felt a twinge. The Olssons had visited Siljevik in the spring, but she and Lars had not yet managed a return excursion to Askebo. She really must organize that.

  “Please,” Cecilia said, “it’s time we went to first names.”

  Sofie smiled and agreed.

  After they had toured the Salon, Cecilia sat in a cafe between Hanna, whom she had known since they were schoolgirls, and Sofie, whom she was just beginning to know. She liked looking at Sofie’s rounded features and the yoke of her blue dress, embroidered with honeysuckle and ladybugs—no doubt her own design. Hanna and Sofie were telling her a story about Dorotea, their Danish friend, whose teacher had advised her to set her paintbox sailing on the river when she was about to marry.

  “How did Dorotea react?”

  “Probably more politely than she should have,” Hanna answered. “We were brought up to turn the other cheek.”

  Hanna had jumped in, as usual, but it was Sofie’s response that Cecilia wanted to hear. She looked at her inquiringly. Sofie’s expression was wary.

  “Until we went to art school,” she said slowly, “most of us had never met another woman who wanted to paint. So we were easily discouraged.”

  But, she corrected herself, Dorotea had not been discouraged. “And the dishes the teacher sent for his wedding present are probably broken by now.”

  Cecilia thought of the Rorstrand china Mamma had given them for their wedding present, a pattern called Flow Blue that was a little old-fashioned even then. She remembered setting off on the train with Lars for married life in France, with a few place settings of the ch
ina carefully packed in a crate to use in their tiny Paris flat. She had been so blithe that day. The path to the wedding had been arduous, and it seemed as if they had reached the happy ending at last. She had looked forward to a union as devoted as her parents’ but more passionate, to children, to growing old as Lars’s one true love.

  “Yes,” Cecilia said. “China breaks, but dreams should not.”

  How sure the future had seemed as they travelled to Paris—really, not like a dream at all. She had never imagined its fragility. The china had fared better: few pieces had been broken, as she was strict with the maids about the proper way to wash it.

  Now Hanna, typically blunt past the point of insensitivity, was telling a nasty story about how Nils Olsson had boasted to Georg that the greatest thing he had ever done was to end Sofie’s painting career. Did Hanna just say the first thing that crossed her mind, without considering its effect on her listeners? It was more than embarrassing, it was painful. Blushing and obviously wounded, Sofie changed the subject to Georg—who worked hard to encourage Hanna’s painting—rather than concentrate on her husband’s disloyalty to her. Cecilia wondered, Is she really such a good wife? Or does she do that to save face?

  When I was single I wore a plaid shawl

  Now that I’m married I’ve nothing at all.

  After a short, uncomfortable pause, Cecilia diverted the conversation to David Copperfield, which she was reading. Nervously, she fell into criticizing David’s silly child-wife Dora before realizing this was a mistake. Wives of any kind were not an ideal topic after Hanna’s story. But Sofie surprised her by mounting a robust criticism of David’s second wife, the saintly Agnes. Sofie might have seen Agnes as a kindred spirit—except obviously she didn’t. Well, Sofie Olsson is inscrutable, Cecilia thought. Then: And I wish I understood her better.

 

‹ Prev