Breath and Bones

by Susann Cokal

  For a moment she actually wished for her black wig; the coarse hairs would have made a good stiff brush. Instead, she unpinned her own hair and let it tumble. It was certainly long enough that if she separated out a strand and held herself carefully, she might dip the ends in this rough red paint and trace an oval on the petticoat.

  But the paint was clotty, the makeshift brush too soft. Famke tried and tried, but she managed nothing that even faintly resembled a face before the door flew open and Myrtice cried, “Ursula! I saw a light in here and—For shame! What on earth can you be about?”

  Famke pulled her skirts down hastily, and in their breeze her lantern blew out. Myrtice had her own light, however, and she made Famke display her petticoat.

  “I declare I’ve never seen the like.” Myrtice studied the crude scarlet curves. “Whatever are you doing to yourself?”

  “I am painting,” Famke said with all the dignity she could conjure. “In oil.”

  “I learned how to watercolor at the normal school,” said Myrtice. “Your posture is all wrong, and you should put on your eyeglasses.”

  For a moment Famke was quiet, and the sound of worms growing fat filled the little hut while she thought of all there was still to remember and learn. “But this is oil paint,” she said at last.

  “Then it shall be all the more difficult to wash out,” Myrtice said, and tugged at Famke’s arm to raise her.

  Famke scrubbed for hours, but the red marks never washed away completely, and for this she was stubbornly glad. She was glad, too, that when Sariah started asking after the missing lantern, Myrtice seemed to have forgotten it, and it remained under the table in the textile hut. Famke was pleased to think she was depriving the Goodhouses of light.

  Chapter 19

  The intelligent observer who comes to the United States and takes the opportunity to study American art as it is to-day cannot but be impressed with the value of its present achievement. The high place it is destined to occupy in the future is plainly indicated in the startling rapidity of its progress and the earnestness of purpose of the artists who are each day adding to its renown.

  BAEDEKER’S UNITED STATES

  Sariah scolded everyone about the lantern, from the smallest child to Famke and Myrtice; only Heber was exempt. And she had ample chance to scold, for the next day was Sunday and the family rode the wagon to Prophet’s ward house.

  “How a lantern can go plain missing, and our best lantern at that, I cannot understand,” she said yet again, her words contorted as she swayed and bumped with the road.

  “Might could be the savages,” fat little Miriam suggested.

  “What would savages want with a lantern? They see in the dark.”

  “Sariah, my dear,” said Heber, “I do not quite think . . .”

  He began an excursus on the habits and abilities of the Indians, and Famke spun herself into her own thoughts.

  Draped now over her lap, dry but limp, was her first painting. It had utterly failed: Not just for lack of technique and materials, but for want of a proper subject as well. Those ovals and squiggles taught her that memory was a poor model and dirt a bad medium. She would not attempt to paint again, or at least not until she had a mirror and some real paint.

  Her thoughts jolted away when the wagon came to a halt at the ward house. Myrtice half-stood among the children in the back: “Is that not one of those journalists? Harry Noble, I believe?”

  Sariah shuddered. “That dreadful man.” She looked around nonetheless. “I swan, what is that he’s sitting in?”

  It was indeed Harry Noble. And he was sitting by the ward house, locked in a small square cage made of strap iron.

  This was such an unusual sight that a crowd all but hid the cell, and it was clear that the meeting would begin late today. The Goodhouses were no less intrigued than their neighbors. Like seven hungry fleas, Heber and Sariah’s children hopped down from the wagon and ran up to get a look. From her vantage point on the now empty backboard, Famke could see that Noble was still in his green suit, though somewhat the worse for wear. He looked to her like one of the exotic stuffed birds in Herr Skatkammer’s collection: just as colorful, just as forlorn.

  Heber made inquiries of the menfolk as his wives watered the horse. “He insulted one of our sisters,” was the final word; Heber delivered it as Brother Ezekiah Donnelly, the week’s spiritual leader, appeared outside to call the loiterers in. “He was preparing one of his features on Mormon life, and he simply would not desist from a most unpleasant line of questions.” For some reason, this made Heber look at Famke, but she was looking neither at him nor at Noble; instead, her eyes were focused on a cricket that she was crushing into the dust.

  “I warn’t aware we had a hoosegow in town,” said Sariah, nodding to Brother Donnelly. She retied her straw bonnet and started toward the ward house. “And a right odd jail it is, too.”

  “The brothers tell me they brought that cell in pieces from Salt Lake last year,” Heber said with a tug at his beard, “but there’s been no need for it. And I do wish they felt no need now.”

  “Once there is a jail,” Myrtice said with her most schoolmarmy air, “there will be people looking to fill it.”

  “Such is the unfortunate nature of humankind,” Heber sighed, “even Saints.”

  Myrtice flushed with the pleasure of being right. “Any road,” she said with elaborate humility, “the man did insult a sister.” Famke wanted to kick her.

  The crowd around the cell had largely dispersed by now, so the Goodhouses were able to get a solid look at the offender inside. With his green-trousered bottom perched on a crate stamped Needles and Pins, he was waving the hat before his face to create a breeze; the balding top of his head was clearly sunburned and about to crack and peel. Perspiration glittered like diamonds in his hair and side whiskers.

  “Ah, the Goodhouse family,” Noble called out, mustering a smile as if to prove he was perfectly comfortable and ready to receive a social visit. “It is a lucky thing indeed to see you. As it happens, I was on my way to pay you a call when this”—he gestured around at the six walls containing him—“occurred. I wanted to bring you my feature on your silk enterprise.”

  If he intended to prompt them toward some kind of action, he failed. Collecting the children one by one, Heber and Sariah strode by without acknowledging him; Myrtice would have done so, too, if Famke had not seen an opportunity to step on her shoelace and force her to kneel and retie it.

  Seeing the family stop at various lengths from his cell, Noble pulled a wilted scrap of paper from his coat pocket. He managed to keep his stream of chat fluid. “Thought you’d want to read it—it makes for a most ripping yarn, with some fine description of the gowns and slippers for which your caterpillars are destined, if I do say so myself.”

  When the Goodhouses merely looked away from him, he cocked his head at Famke and held the scrap of paper toward her. “Miss Summerfield, how do you fare this fine Indian summer day?”

  Famke, who had been savoring the scent of tobacco smoke that steamed from his clothes in the sunshine, dared to step up and reach for the clipping. He, however, pulled it away before she could touch it.

  Noble put his mouth close to the iron slats. “There is a lovely little paragraph about you,” he said in a whisper that made Myrtice’s eyes narrow and the leather shoestring snap in her hands. “If I do say it myself, a lovely paragraph. Yours is a face, adrift in the desert, that inspires men to heights of artistic—”

  “Ursula,” Myrtice said loudly, “will you please help me knot this lace?”

  Famke hung breathlessly on Noble’s next word.

  “—achievement. Indeed,” he continued, as if he could not see her flush, “I recollect you have a passion for the arts, do you not?”

  Famke suddenly remembered caution. She dropped to her knees, heedless of her ugly homespun skirt, and tried to help Myrtice, thereby entangling the process further. Myrtice made a sharp exclamation and hobbled toward her aunt, leav
ing Famke to topple into the dust.

  “Yes,” Noble ruminated, “I recall that you were most interested in art and artists.”

  Famke got to her feet.

  “Or, no,” he corrected himself, “I believe there was a particular artist—was he a sculptor?”

  “A painter,” she mumbled, with her heart hammering at her ribs. “Albert Castle. Have you heard something of him?”

  Noble ran his hand over his flaming head and dropped the hat on it with a wince. He seemed to be searching the far recesses of his memory. “Alas,” he said at last, with every appearance of regret. “I can tell you nothing. Nothing, that is, while I am in—”

  “So you do know something?” she asked eagerly, forgetting to soften her voice. She recognized that he was about to shift conversation to his own predicament, and she had no wish to discuss what she felt she could not change. “You have seen him? You have found his work?”

  “Ah, Miss Summerfield, but ponder this: how little a particular man, even an artist, matters in the face of art itself. A hundred years from now, when we are dead and our small struggles and plans forgotten, citizens of the world will marvel at a charming watercolor, savor an exquisite poem, polish up a marble—”

  “Hurry,” Famke hissed, as Sariah started toward her.

  “Have you sought your answer in prayer, as your new faith counsels you to do? Perhaps your present God’s earthly wife would be sympathetic to—”

  “Have you seen Albert?”

  “Regrettably,” Noble said, with no appearance of regret at all, “any information I might have is at my hotel.” Just as Sariah was upon them, he slid the article between the bars with two fingers.

  Famke took it and, for want of a better solution, stuffed it hastily down the neck of her blouse. Continuing the same movement, she also pulled a thin steel hairpin from her wig and poked it through the bars, hushing Harry Noble’s thanks with an icy stare.

  Then her co-wife took her by the elbow and dragged her back to the bosom of the Goodhouses, who were—all of them, even the children, even Heber—now regarding her with suspicion.

  “Brush off your skirt,” Sariah said. “It’s filthy.”

  But Myrtice was the one to ask what was in everyone’s mind: “That man—did he follow you from New York?”

  “Of course not,” said Famke; yet, that afternoon, when she unfolded the clipping at last, she was startled to find a rectangle of stiff paper tucked among the creases. It had been professionally printed in thick black ink, with a border of twining vines:

  Harry Noble, also Hermes

  ~traveling~

  Temporarily to be found at the Continental Hotel,

  West Temple Street, Salt Lake City

  Now, why did he do that? she wondered. He couldn’t really expect her to go to him there; how would such a thing be possible? She tore the card into bits and burned them in Sariah’s cookstove.

  Then she began to plot.

  Chapter 20

  In considering the modern “Movement” in New York it is fair to say that we cover the whole country, and the condition of the fine arts in the United States may be measured by applying the gauge to what is to be seen in New York.

  BAEDEKER’S UNITED STATES

  It was Viggo’s first day in America, and already he was doing his work. He still thought of it this way: his work, as assigned by Mother Birgit; and yet it was what he wanted to do, an undertaking that sat very close to his heart.

  As soon as he stepped out of Castle Garden, he asked about trains to Utah and learned that there would be one in the morning. Then, having done as much as he could to find Famke for now, he decided to detect what he might about her husband, the painter. With his knapsack on his back, he wandered into the street and used his shipboard English to ask a pair of gentlemen with fine whiskers and tall hats where artists tended to congregate. He did not mind the gentlemen’s sneers and stares, for they answered him, and he went to all those places. The Italian restaurants on Sullivan and MacDougal Streets, the French restaurants on Greene Street and University Place—in their dark, smoky dining rooms, he stared at the shabby men and women tucking in to messy plates and declaiming passionately in a vocabulary he could not understand: gesso, craquelure, chiaroscuro.

  Viggo asked the monkeyish man at the cash register where he might go to see some paintings.

  “At seven of the evening?” the little man said with what Viggo supposed was a Roman snort. “The galleries, they are shut.” But he directed Viggo to another restaurant, one where the owner was in sympathy with Bohemian ideals. He allowed some of his favorite artists to buy their meals with paint and canvas which he hung on the walls.

  This establishment was French and, perhaps because of the exceptionally heavy cloud of wine and smoke in the air, most of the paintings looked blurry to Viggo. He had difficulty deciding what some of them were meant to depict. Was this one a haystack or a fat frog? Was that a gentleman in a frock coat or a widow in weeds—or perhaps a cart horse wearing a hat?

  He felt more comfortable with a few small canvases tucked into a corner near the kitchen. These were simple compositions and very realistic in their details: one of a glistening spill of dead fish, mouths gaping in a way he recognized and understood; one of a rose and a fly, with every vein in petal and wing finely traced; and one of a ship on the sea.

  Having recently been on a ship himself, Viggo devoted most of his attention to this last. It was, he thought, very nicely done, with many masts and a wild hard wind blowing holes in the sails. The waves on which the ship rode rose high and luminous green, crashing into soap-white foam. It was small wonder, then, that the lone human element in the picture—the ship’s figurehead—looked terrified: her face and bosom blunted, her long red wooden hair licking down the hull like a flame.

  It was a fine picture indeed, and every detail suited it but one. Bending very close, Viggo saw that the wave in the far right corner was, yes, about to enfold a castle such as he would expect to find only on dry land. He made out the sharp peak of a turret and a crenellated square to the right, with an open space where the far wall would be. He did not quite understand why it was there until he blinked and saw that the castle was actually a blending of two decorated letters: a towering A and a fortresslike C.

  Painted around the frame’s four sides, he read:

  • Remember me when I •

  • am gone away Gone far away •

  • into the silent land. •

  • Christina Georgina Rossetti •

  The words were simple, and he understood most of them. A.C., the man who wrote to Famke, was in Mæka looking for her. Viggo’s eyelids fluttered in a way that, to the restaurant’s other patrons, made him look most artistic.

  Even on a Sunday, farm life centered on the silkworms, which were growing fat, sluggish, and ready to spin: pregnant with their own next selves. Soon the yellow-gray bodies would make white-gray cocoons, and the Goodhouses would be one step closer to securing prosperity for the Prophetians. That afternoon, as she lifted the veil over the largest table, Famke imagined a worm writhing through the eye of a needle, being stitched into a delicate map of paradise. And as she spread the chopped mulberry leaves, she envisioned worms wiggling their slow way through her own petticoat, right where she had painted the bloody ovals that never became a face.

  Six weeks, she thought. If they are going to spin, I have been here six weeks.

  Famke heard her name. Heber and Sariah’s oldest daughter, Alma, was standing in the farmyard, calling her into the house. Famke scattered the last leaves haphazardly, and as she replaced the linen, her toe collided with something hard that gave a liquid slosh: the lantern. Famke poked it farther beneath the table and its gauzy skirt.

  “Gadding about the farmyard again,” Sariah commented, when Famke joined the family where they had gathered in the dun-colored parlor. All the Goodhouses looked somber, but then it was hard to look otherwise when seated below so many white manikins in black boxes. Sar
iah held a heavy book that she placed in Famke’s hands: The Silk Farmer’s Guide and Almanac. “It is time we learn how to take the next step.” Apparently there was no more sin in reading on a Sunday than in feeding the livestock.

  Sariah pointed out the passage Famke must read, the chapter that described baking the cocoons and spinning their threads. Sariah herself would read privately about reserving a few pupae for breeding, and the manner in which to encourage mothly mating. While the children played Emigration with peg dolls and iron handcarts, and Sariah cut the sacred symbols from a worn-out union suit that was ready for the rag box, the two younger wives took turns reading aloud. Together they memorized instructions for winding a cocoon’s outer hundred feet or so onto one set of wooden reels, the finer and more valuable inner thread onto another, and twining four of those strands together on the spinning wheels that Heber had bought at auction.

  Heber, sitting with a favorite Mormon tract, spoke up when Famke paused for a sip of water. “Four,” he said, “is an ideal number. Where four are bound together, there is great strength.”

  Sariah and Myrtice pursed their identical mouths, and Famke excused herself to visit the convenience.

  She sat on the hot wooden seat and opened Harry Noble’s clipping again. This she read avidly, savoring the descriptions of “frangible threads into which the caterpillars’ lives will spin, to be cut by a fair flame-haired Atropos; eventually to adorn the ladies Eastward in ruffles and flounces of softest, buttery silk, to line their slippers that they may walk on air, while the lovely Mormon Fates labor in their simple homespun . . .” Naturally she overlooked the last part. She would not wear homespun forever.