Sofie & Cecilia

by Katherine Ashenburg

  “Well,” said Cecilia, pretending to consider the question, while her heart beat fast, “I suppose it happens. I will have to read the book.”

  “I suppose it does happen,” Sofie agreed. “But we don’t often read about it in novels, and not about women who are fairly content with their husbands. Mrs. Dalloway’s love for Sally Seton is the most romantic thing in the book.”

  Sofie noticed that Cecilia’s neck looked blotchy. Well, it was warm in the train. There was one more thing she was curious about.

  “Virginia Woolf writes about what she calls ‘this falling in love with women’—that it is something quite superior to our love for men. More disinterested, more protective, a love with great integrity. What do you think, is there anything to that?”

  But Cecilia only said again that she would have to read the book.

  “Yes, I think you will enjoy it. I will send it to you as soon as I finish.”

  “Thank you,” Cecilia said firmly, “but don’t bother, I will order it.”

  Chapter Forty-six

  MARCH 1927

  CECILIA WAS ANXIOUS about Lars. He was having a hard time with his The Red Suit. He had painted himself standing braced, legs apart, against the timber walls of his studio, in a Falun-red three-piece suit. He was in defiant colour, while the studio looked almost monochrome. A cigarette drooped from his fingers. There were heavy bags under his eyes, and he looked resigned. Lars Vogt, the reluctantly civilized bon vivant. But he could not satisfy himself; he went over and over the same ground in different versions, working terrible hours.

  Cecilia urged him to leave it for a while and do another self-portrait, this time wearing a coat made of wolf skins. But this became a relentless picture of an even more exhausted man, his head dwarfed by a body laden with furs. Another cigarette. Another flush under the cheekbone, which looked healthy at first and then sadly hectic. Here was the Lars who spent more and more of his time at Tallmon, his fishing lodge north of Siljevik on the Dalalven River. Half-savage in his animal skins, civilized only to the extent of his beaver hat and cigarette. Her dearest wild man.

  There was one more picture from that time, a photograph taken of the two of them by a visitor. Lars was at his easel, wearing his smock. Cecilia stood behind him. The large white pleated collar on her dark dress made her look like a nun who had taken off her coif. She stared at his work, on the easel, the way a mother watches over a sleeping child. He stared at the camera as if facing down his old enemy, time.

  Siljevik, 6 March 1927

  Dear Sofie,

  Thank you for your kind note about Mona. Her death has hurt Lars very much, of course. In some ways she was more like his beloved older sister than his mother. He is designing a bas-relief of her head for her gravestone, which he will see from the window of his studio.

  Miss Gregorius agrees with me that Lars is far from well. He is even heavier than when you saw him last, he moves slowly, breathes with difficulty and lights one cigarette from the last one. But he is determined to eat, drink and smoke more than ever, while he works as if possessed. He is deep in a portrait of Carl Eklund and another one of Lukas Wallenberg’s younger daughter, and has gone to Stockholm to supervise the sales of his latest etchings. He has plenty of buyers, although the critics disparage him more and more. But he sloughs off the criticism like an old snake slipping out of a used-up skin.

  Your friend,

  Cecilia

  Something had loosened Cecilia’s pen. A few weeks later, she wrote,

  Siljevik, 20 March 1927

  Dear Sofie,

  Once, when we were just getting to know each other, you wrote asking me if married life had surprised me. I did not really answer you, and I probably thought differently about it then. These days I am impressed with the permanence of temperament. You tried for so many years, with so much patience and determination, to make Nils happy. But he was not cut from that cloth. Whereas my disappointment, which is mostly in the past now, was that nothing I did could make Lars unhappy. I remember Nils calling him “this magic animal”—and he was right. If Lars has food, drink, De Reszke cigarettes, beautiful women and work, he is happy. For him, work is as much a physical pleasure as the others. And that is what he has taught me. It is his work that binds us together, and through that I have found my own work.

  I am not sure if a man’s character is more unchangeable than a woman’s. Perhaps men need to change less than women do. Or perhaps we are naturally more flexible. I have accommodated to Lars but, along with difficulties, it has brought me good things I could not have foreseen. I see that again I have not answered your question, after all these years. Yes, married life has surprised me! But not all in negative ways.

  Your old friend,

  Cecilia

  As she put down her pen, she thought how strange it was that she did not feel hypocritical writing about marriage as though she were as virtuous a wife as Sofie had been. On the contrary, the words felt natural. A man who has a mistress or consorts with prostitutes may still think of himself as a good provider, a good father, a good husband. Now, with Lars, the shoe was on the other foot. Or rather, the shoes were on both feet. Still, it was curious that she was able to write about Lars more honestly now that she had her own secret. She wondered about including “beautiful women” in the list of Lars’s necessities. Was she being disloyal to him, or humiliating herself, or just acknowledging what everyone knew? The last, she decided. So much went unspoken between women friends.

  But that did not mean she would talk to Sofie about Lisbeth.

  * * *

  —

  Lars now spent most days and nights at the fishing lodge in Tallmon, where he retreated into what he liked to think were the habits of his ancestors. He slept between furs, with no linen, and laughed at the occasional visitor from the city who brought a toothbrush. Instead, he ran naked from his bed to scoop up water from the river, which he gargled noisily and then spit out in a great arc. The only citified things he did not give up at Tallmon were his scotch and his fat cigarettes. He drew around him a circle of local people, carpenters, farmers, hunters, and spent his evenings with them. His favourite, Maria, played the guitar and the occasional visitor reported to Cecilia that sometimes they all sang desolate folk songs in a monotone. Cecilia did not go to the fishing lodge. Lars exaggerated his connection to that life, of course—his hard-working Lutheran grandparents would have been affronted by Tallmon and its goings-on.

  Meanwhile he bought, bought, bought—peasant furniture and blankets and wooden bowls and buildings when he was in Sweden, more than they could ever display, and when he went abroad, more paintings and antique furniture and silver. He never enjoyed museums because, as he liked to say, “Why go there? There is nothing for sale.” After his mother’s death, his buying became a mania. He also endowed a professorship of Nordic Art History at Stockholm University, founded a poetry prize and set up a fiddling competition in Siljevik. It looked as if he gave away money as soon as he got it, but the careful old peasant survived. Half of every sale went in the bank, and he spent or donated the rest.

  “There is so much defiance in this feverish activity,” Cecilia said to Lars’s Friend Archbishop Soderblom, as she walked with him one day in the garden.

  Cecilia said this to Lars’s friend Archbishop Soderblom, as she walked with him one day in the garden. Lars was at Tallmon, and had promised to come to Siljevik in time for dinner.

  “He is not defying death,” Soderblom half-corrected her, “but weakness and illness. He wants to go out quickly, the way a candle gutters.”

  Chapter Forty-seven

  JULY 1927

  WHEN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S next novel, To the Lighthouse, was published, Sofie and Cecilia both ordered a copy from Hemlins. Often they shared a book, but neither was prepared to wait for this one. Sofie put everything aside to read it, almost guiltily relishing the long evenings with no one to interrupt her or remind her that it was time for bed. While she read, she imagined Cecilia, sitt
ing in her favourite reading chair, loving the portrait of Mrs. Ramsay, a woman in her fifties with eight children. It was not something Sofie could mention, but she felt Cecilia idealized women with children. Her own reaction was different: as she read about Mrs. Ramsay’s tireless indulgence of her self-absorbed husband, Sofie found herself impatient.

  Askebo, 11 July 1927

  Dear Cecilia,

  I think of you at Siljevik, with eyes only for To the Lighthouse, like me. And I know you will expect me to defend poor Mr. Ramsay. Perhaps this picture of masculine need and feminine solace, while undeniably brilliant, is losing its power for me, I am not sure. But I will admit that Mr. Ramsay’s combination of achievement and insecurity strikes a familiar note—not that I ever answered Nils’s longing for encouragement with the angelic resourcefulness of Mrs. Ramsay! But he would have loved it if I had.

  Thinking of Nils, I am reminded of your letter this spring when you considered my impertinent question of long ago: had marriage surprised you? You wrote about my “patience and determination” in trying to make Nils happy, and that filled my eyes with tears. Poor man, he had so much trouble with happiness, and I am painfully conscious that I should have done more for him. But thank you for seeing it so charitably.

  But to return to To the Lighthouse. I appreciate the humour and the compassion with which Mrs. Woolf describes Mr. Ramsay’s need—a man’s need for a woman’s admiration can be so intense that it is almost frightening. My heart does go out to Mr. Ramsay, of course, but now from a certain distance.

  Does Mrs. Ramsay have you wrapped around her beautiful little finger?

  Your friend,

  Sofie

  Siljevik, 19 July 1927

  My dear Sofie,

  Perhaps I have a surprise for you. Mrs. Ramsay is undeniably a figure with enormous allure. The beloved centre of her family and friends, the doer of good deeds, beautiful and instinctive, she is the perfect woman. Like everyone in the book and like many readers, I feel her attraction. Her siren song, really.

  But I have to put that attraction a little to the side because it is pernicious. A strong word, I know. The appeal of Mrs. Ramsay and her ilk, the ideal with which we were raised, dooms us to frustration and disappointment. To think you can be all that, do all that—bolster an anxious husband, provide eight children with perceptive love, arrange boeuf en daube for houseguests and hand-knitted stockings for the poor, all without ever having a mean or even selfish thought—is impossible and even cruel as a goal. And, in spite of what dear Miss Key thought, how many women are actually satisfied with trying to achieve this kind of perfection? Mrs. Woolf is very clever, in that several characters, including his wife, see Mr. Ramsay clearly, as one who takes and does not give, as being venerable and laughable at the same time. Which might well call Mrs. Ramsay’s constant solicitude into question. But in spite of that, I think that Mrs. Woolf, too, is infatuated with Mrs. Ramsay.

  And I admit that I am too, at least when I am reading. Only later, when I gather my thoughts, do I see it in a different light. But the book is unforgettable, and like you I can hardly wait to return to it.

  Your friend,

  Cecilia

  Well, this is a turnabout, Sofie thought as she put down the letter. She had always been the one with more doubts about these Eternal Feminine figures than Cecilia—knowing something about the laziness, insecurity and egotism that could hide behind the martyr’s shield. But what was changing in Cecilia?

  What Cecilia did not mention in her letter was that she, unlike Sofie, did not have the novel all to herself. Lisbeth snatched it up whenever she had a free minute. And Lisbeth had very decided opinions on Mrs. Ramsay and women’s training in self-sacrifice.

  Sofie, too, had not mentioned something: that the character who stirred her more than the Ramsays was the little, self-effacing, middle-aged painter Lily Briscoe. What moved Sofie about Lily was her relationship to her painting. She read over and over a passage in which Lily contemplates an unfinished canvas.

  Here she was again, she thought, stepping back to look at it, drawn out of gossip, out of living, out of community with people into the presence of this formidable ancient enemy of hers—this other thing, this truth, this reality, which suddenly laid hands on her, emerged stark at the back of appearances and commanded her attention…this form, were it only the shape of a white lamp-shade looming on a wicker table, roused one to perpetual combat, challenged one to a fight in which one was bound to be worsted.

  This formidable ancient enemy of hers. This other thing, this truth, this reality. Sofie felt as if Mrs. Woolf had known her. She copied out the passage, and put it in the drawer of the table beside her bed.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  1931

  IN 1931, LARS insisted on going on his usual summer sailing and painting trip with Maria, his companion from Tallmon. Cecilia did not see where he could possibly find the strength for it, but he would not listen to her objections. With a feeling of dread, she went ahead with her visit to her sister’s house in the archipelago. It was there that word reached her. The trip had proved too much for Lars and he was returning to Siljevik. While she made plans to catch the boat to Stockholm and then the train to Siljevik, another telegram was making its way to her.

  Oddly enough, it was little Erik who had to break the news. Her nephew was little no more, a man in his forties with a wife and children, but in the family story he was eternally the frustrated toddler who did not want to sit still while Lars painted his portrait. Cecilia was packing when she heard someone climbing the stairs. Something in those reluctant steps told her what Erik had to say before he appeared at her door and took her hands in his.

  In Siljevik, Lars lay in his red-tented bed, looking impossibly small. It made no sense, he’d had no time to lose any flesh, but he was diminished. His waxy colour accentuated the pouches under his eyes. His expression was concerned, as if he were missing something. He hated being without something to do with his hands, and Cecilia had the mad idea of weaving a twig and his little knife between those still fingers. They told her that just after he became ill, his hands had moved as if he were painting. He had talked about colours and his dog, Liten, while he wielded his imaginary brush. Then he had stopped talking, and his right side did not move again. Now there was nothing for anyone to do but wait for him to die. The doctors said they would not wait long.

  He came up our alley and he whistled me out

  But the tail of his shirt from the trousers hung out.

  Until then, Lisbeth almost always came to her in the night. Lisbeth was the seeker. But that night and for a week of nights afterwards, Cecilia went to Lisbeth in the guest room and climbed into the narrow bed hung with ivory-and-gold draperies. On the first night, Lisbeth burst into a storm of tears after her satisfaction. Cecilia wondered, Who is comforting whom? Her eyelid had taken to flickering but she was dry-eyed, as she had been since the news of the stroke.

  The next morning, Archbishop Soderblom and the mayor came to make arrangements for the wake. They assumed that it would take place in the Hall.

  “No,” Cecilia said. “He will stay in his bedroom.”

  “My dear Cecilia, his room is far too small,” the archbishop said. “People will be lined up far down the road waiting to pay their respects. There is talk of putting on extra trains from Stockholm. And the circulation is all wrong, as people would have to leave through your dressing room.”

  “I don’t care about that. I don’t want him in the Hall.”

  “Cecilia.” It was Lisbeth.

  Both men stared. Lisbeth had called her by her first name.

  “He would want to be there,” Lisbeth said.

  Cecilia was silent. This was no business of Lisbeth’s. She also thought, more irritably than usual, how much she disliked the Hall. But Lisbeth was right. That was what Lars would want. The archbishop cleared his throat. Would Cecilia want Lars photographed after he died? She thought back to the post-mortem paintings Lars had done as
a student, painting fast to get a likeness so that he could continue after they closed the coffin.

  “No,” she said. “He has painted his own post-mortems.”

  She meant the portraits in the red suit and the fur coat. But no one asked her what she meant, so perhaps she had not said it out loud. Usually Cecilia was the planner, but now she sat quiet while the archbishop and the mayor organized the details. Lisbeth sat on a chair against the wall. She was red-eyed, like a child whose father is dying or a girl whose lover is doomed.

  In bed one night during that first week, there came a moment when both women were quiet but still awake. Then Lisbeth said, judiciously, “He will be the first Viking to be buried in a three-piece red suit.”

  After a startled second or two, Cecilia laughed. So did Lisbeth, and once they started they could not stop. The laughter would tail away and they would stay silent for a little while, but then the thought of the Hall with its Viking gear or Lars lying in state wearing a horned helmet and his red suit would set Cecilia off again, and Lisbeth would join her. Lisbeth made things worse by telling Cecilia what happened when a real Viking chieftain was buried. After days of being given strong drink and singing happily, the thrall girl who had volunteered to join her master gave away her bracelets and rings. She was given more bottles of drink, and six men went into the master’s tent on his ship to have their way with her. Then they began beating their shields to muffle her screams. She was hanged and stabbed between the ribs at the same time, and after that the ship was burned. It was grisly and terrible, and Lisbeth and Cecilia laughed even more.

  Cecilia imagined the candidates for Lars’s thrall girl—Lydia Barnes, various models, perhaps Maria? Or Françoise, their little maid in Montmartre? There were others, so many women for whom Lars’s indolent charm had been not fatal but decisive. She thought about her own forty years of devotion. But she was not ready to join Lars in the afterlife, even without the stabbing and hanging. Finally, she began to weep.