by Susann Cokal
Coughing a little, waiting for dreams, Famke thought that she had rescued something beautiful from the shambles of Ruby’s life. The portrait would show very well at the funeral, and as for the painting of the Muses—no one would look closely enough to find a seam there, surely.
Once again, she was Albert’s collaborator.
Although Sariah Goodhouse and her niece were clearly angry with Famke, Viggo could not complain of their welcome to him. They thought the Wanted poster a very good plan, and while they worked on it they let him sleep in the mud barn, like a hired man. He helped them by making much-needed repairs to the burned part of their house.
Impervious to flame as the mud walls seemed to him, apparently there was enough straw in their composition to smoulder like a big hot coal when the fire traveled from the silk hut to the owners’ residence. Thus the east side of the house was nearly gone, and Myrtice had had to hang a couple of quilts over the holes in her walls. Viggo saw the lamplight shining through them at night, when he lay in the hayloft trying to sleep and she sat up, ill, or laboring over the drawing that was going to help him find Famke. They were like the stained-glass windows of wealthy Catholic churches he’d heard described at Immaculate Heart.
By a fortunate circumstance, Myrtice had spent two years in the reluctant study of art; it had been a required course at the normal school she’d attended in Georgia, which was also where she told Viggo she had met her husband, Sterling Black, and lost him.
“He was in cotton,” she said, avoiding Viggo’s eyes. He got the sense that she would prefer not to answer any more questions about her life before this stint in Utah. Probably questions were distressing to women in what Sariah and Myrtice referred to as a delicate condition.
And Myrtice was very delicate indeed; Viggo could see that. Her hands trembled and she perspired, even in this cool autumn weather, as he watched her labor over her ink sketches of Famke. She had a large photograph of Famke posing with the Goodhouse family—standing next to the patriarch, no less—and she kept it propped in front of her as she worked, carefully expanding the ill-defined pale face, enormous eyes, and strange topknot into a head-and-shoulders rendering that she and Sariah found representative. Myrtice was not very good at drawing; but then she said she did not consider the skill proper to the young Saints she taught, and she had not bothered to keep her hand in since returning to the house where she’d grown up. She tore up or crumpled most every sketch before it was finished.
Looking at the photograph from which Myrtice was working, Viggo felt himself pulled to Famke more intensely than ever. He now had three memories of her: the witch at the cauldron, the figurehead on the prow, and this plain, overexposed housemaid. That the last was so ugly and atypical made him the more eager to rescue her. He imagined her adrift somewhere on the vast prairies of the West, or tucked within the folds of a mountainside, probably suffering a loss of memory or a surfeit of shame. Myrtice Black’s drawing would be of great help in finding her. Viggo would comb those prairies and hills, showing the posters around every town and nailing them up in prominent situations; surely somewhere someone would be able to tell him something about her.
He and Sariah and Myrtice agreed on the wording of the notice, to be typeset by the same printer who would copy the image:
WANTED
Information as to whereabouts of Ursula Summerfield,
formerly of Prophet City, Utah Terr.
Hair red or black, eyes blue, build slender.
REWARD
Respond to Heber Goodhouse of that town or to any officer
of the law in Deseret County.
“It reads just right,” Myrtice said, looking over Sariah’s shoulder at the document on Heber’s desk.
“Might could bring that correspondent back, however,” Sariah said dubiously. “He turned up from Salt Lake not two hours after Brother Good-house left again to look for her,” she explained to Viggo, “a man calling himself Hermy Noble. He always did have an interest in your Ursula—risked another trip to the hoosegow, coming back here as he did. Of course we didn’t tell him anything about her.”
Viggo did not understand much of that speech, beyond the fact that another man was looking for Famke. He felt a stab of jealousy. Perhaps this man was her artist, the man who had painted her . . . But there was some comfort to be derived from the idea that he hadn’t found her yet, and Viggo had the cooperation of the family.
Myrtice twitched: A gas bubble had escaped. Politely pretending it was a cough, Viggo passed her his rough cotton handkerchief, and she dabbed her mouth with it. He felt the heat coming off her body as she smiled at him more warmly than the favor required.
Sariah was oblivious to what was happening in her background; she held the pen poised over the word reward. “I’m not sure we should include this,” she said. “Getting these posters printed will cost a small fortune as it is, and we don’t have Brother Goodhouse’s approval for a reward.”
“‘Reward’ is a general enough term,” said Myrtice, tucking Viggo’s handkerchief into her sleeve. “It might be the satisfaction of a job well done, of helping a lost soul come home.”
“Exactly right.” Satisfied now, Sariah laid down her pen, leaving a large spot on the blotter.
Chapter 28
The traveler will notice that the names of the stations have assumed a Spanish form, and should he happen to address any of the swarthy men that chance to be lounging around the stations, he would very likely to [sic] receive a reply in the language of Hispania. The Spanish spoken is not Castilian by any means, but is about as near it as “pidgin English” is to genuine Chinese.
STANLEY WOOD,
OVER THE RANGE TO THE GOLDEN GATE
She looks just like an angel,” Ma Medlock sobbed into a scrap of black lawn no less ethereal than the frock in which Famke had clothed the painted Ruby. “The angel she is now . . .”
The funeral was a splendid affair, as a good segment of Boulder’s population came out to see Ruby off. The fair but frail and the grimy miners agreed: Ma’s pride and joy had never looked better than she did nestled against the auroral satin of her coffin—unless it were in the glistening Heaven of her portrait. It was a shame to consign the one to the earth, but there was the other for consolation. The mourners gazed upon the picture after the burial, while tucking into the baked meats and fruit pies that Ma had commissioned and listening as the young professor played a hymn about the passage of time. Everyone allowed as it was a wonderful funeral.
In her grief and gratitude, Ma gave the artist an extra ten dollars, and Famke felt she had recovered much of what she’d lost in the hills of Colorado: She had the same financial stake with which she’d set out from Utah, something like the same hopes, and, she felt, a valuable new skill. She resisted the urge to return to Leadville to redeem the tinderbox, but rode instead to Denver with renewed purpose, which translated to more manly firmness in her step.
She did not let herself slide into feminine ways when once again she visited Amy Oggle’s house. The paint was now dry upon those Muses, too, and by pressing the girls—almost all turned redheads—to search their memories, she settled upon what seemed the most likely itinerary for Albert: through mining country and down to the land of the savages.
“You look different with your hair cut,” beautiful Jo said wistfully. She ran her fingers through it, almost as if Famke were a prospective customer.
Amy rubbed at a smudge on Famke’s cheek. “Complexion’s going the way of your hair, too. You need some Eau de la Jeunesse.”
“Glycerine, spermaceti, and almond nut cream,” Big Kitty translated.
“At a reasonable price,” Amy added, and Famke bought a small jar.
The madam said nothing of her feminine earning potential now, but she did permit Famke to take down Albert’s picture and paint a few Muses’ hair red, and gave her ten dollars for the afternoon’s work.
For the next two months, Famke traveled: in train and wagon and on foot, going from salon
to saloon to general store, to a nightly pallet in a flophouse where the men around her snored and gassed while she tossed and coughed. Lugging a carpetbag heavy with painter’s supplies and Eau de la Jeunesse, with the keepsakes associated with Albert still swelling her secret pocket Down There, she headed first south and then west through Castle Rock, Greenland, Pueblo, Huerfano Station; circled through Hole in Prairie, Rocky Ford, Apishapa; swept through Alamosa, Tirrietta, Servillela. She sought Albert among miners of gold and silver and turquoise, ranchers of cattle and sheep, the Indians and Chinamen and Negroes who served them, and always, always the fair but frail.
Even if there was no direct news of Albert, there was usually word of some artwork. It seemed art had become the currency of the day, and everywhere a local bar or brothel was boasting about its new masterpiece—an oil over the piano, a watercolor in the washroom, a sculpture (but she wasn’t interested in those) adding a note of gentility to the red plush salon where girls were auctioned off at so much the hour.
Wandering through those parlors, she studied each picture in depth. Most of them meant nothing to her, and she left before she could be charged for a drink. But when Albert’s work was there, she recognized it immediately. She noticed he was painting many warrior women these days; they seemed to be a generally popular subject among the prostitutes who wanted to think of brighter times, for every whore had a nice word to say about armor and swords. But Famke knew, also, that these subjects had always been dear to Albert’s heart and brush, so she hunted until somewhere, in some curl of limb or smoke, she found a little castle formed of two letters.
Most significant of all, she felt, was that many of the women—all of the princesses—had red hair. Among the Amazons, she might find long red tresses flowing over one naked breast and into a brief set of armor, so obviously belonging to the Princess Calafia; and the queen of the Valkyries, the goddess Freya, draped the same coppery curls over a shadowy hero.
Albert remembered her. It was clear that he could not forget her. So even as she was shoved out of the salons for not hiring a girl, Famke felt a glow deep in her belly; no, deeper than that, down in her bones.
When there was a chance to make money with her new skill, Famke made it. She cut and repainted pictures to their owners’ specifications, reflecting changes in taste and personnel; she did an even brisker trade by persuading madams to let her brush on a layer of varnish to seal the paint—a nicety that Albert had apparently felt too rushed to provide often. She undressed the nymphs and Muses, dyed the drab locks golden or red, painted her own blue eyes into the mysterious blurred faces that Albert had said could house the features of girls yet to come. She painted out freckles and brought certain popular figures to the foreground, relegating others to the shadows, and in the dim light of gas globes and oil lamps the seams were invisible.
These diverse gifts with artwork fascinated the girls: Dante Castle took something his older brother had made and thought perfect, and he made something more useful out of it. He so eclipsed his brother that no one noticed if he patchworked a Valkyrie over Albert’s ingenious signature. Anyone would rather look at a pretty girl than a silly building anyway.
Once in a long while, Famke painted an articulate shadow around the sex of a girl near the back of the composition. The whores who giggled at the misted-over genitals, as Famke had once done, crowed when they saw this hint of real hair. In Mirage they banded together and presented her with a wreath woven of their own private locks.
“I shall wear it over my heart,” she vowed, and then slid it into her pocket to coil with her own long red tail.
For a time, she was happy. Her hopes were strong; the madams paid her decently; the whores did not bore her by describing their trade. And from each canvas, no matter how she altered it, Famke took the comfort of seeing some new beauty in herself, or at least in the ephemeral Famke that Albert remembered: the roundness of her former breasts, the fluid lines of her arms, the once-brilliant hues of her cheeks and eyes and hair. Those insights, as much as anything else, kept her moving forward, even as in each town she whispered a hope that this time, here, she would find her lover still at work, and in each town she was disappointed.
There were delays and complications: a fierce rainstorm that washed track away one afternoon, a fire set in a sculpture-rich parlorhouse the next. A little boy in Box Elder stole her hat, and evidence of the Dynamite Gang was everywhere. Fortunately she had learned to keep the bulk of her money in her secret pocket, where it rubbed against the goose girl’s penciled features and blurred her face into complete unrecognizability.
Holding that now-faceless girl, Famke ran her eyes over the graphite shadows and tried to conjure them back to their original crispness. She did not dare try to touch them, not even with the brush she was learning to wield with more confidence. Just before putting the sketch away, she would turn it over and look at the words, which were blurring, too. Some of the letters had already disappeared—
Eventually, the only word Famke could truly make out was “love”—and by then it was almost too painful to look.
Chapter 29
The electric air excites the nervous systems of newcomers to a high tension, producing a sort of intoxication of good health, with keen appetite, perfect digestion and sound sleep.
MOSES KING,
KING’S HANDBOOK OF THE UNITED STATES
The elder tree in the girls’ courtyard was losing hold of its autumnal gold. Every few minutes it shed a pinch of ore as a leaf fluttered down to the dark earth below, skittering through the square panes of the old-fashioned window.
Birgit’s hands were shaking so badly that she knew she’d tear the thin paper, which was much weakened and begrimed by its long journey. She took the time to hunt out her letter opener—plain, functional steel with a slightly broken tip—and slice open the clumsy gout of sealing-wax. For a moment the blade reflected the yellow tree outside, and then the letter fell limply open in her hands.
Dear Mother,
I think you must wonder what I am doing and where Famke is and the answer to both is I don’t know but I have a few suspicions. I have been in Amerika five weeks now you know and it is a good country as imagined.
But not cosy for finding somebody being so big. I don’t think you should worry she is dead because everybody says she is very dygtig, the word they use is “scheming” which should make you glad. I met the family in Utah and they are unhappy she is gone but are helping me to find her with some pictures of her face drawn by the teacher. The husband is away. They seem to be good people and not like the Mormons we hear about in Denmark. They say she was happy here so that should comfort you but not so happy she didn’t want to run away, and maybe she’ll come back if she can’t find her artist and marry him again. Though I don’t know for certain that is why she left. Maybe she realized he was not for her and is trying to return to Denmark, I believe I will find out if I ask at the rail stations. She will need this money which I have been saving because it is hers. My money is in my left boot and Famke’s in my right so you needn’t worry I will lose any of it.
I am sending you a handbill because I think you might like to see it, none of us ever had our picture taken and it is a good likeness in my opinion even if her hair looks peculiar, it is not in the fashion of women here either but maybe the fashion has changed.
Writing letters is still hard for me in spite of all the pains Sister Saint Bernard took over it.
Respectful wishes,
Viggo of the Immaculate Heart
Birgit stood at the window, gazing with blind eyes into the courtyard. So Famke had moved on; she was no longer with the missionary, perhaps no longer even a Mormon. That must be to the good—or was it? Even after decades in the black habit, Birgit could not muster the hopefulness and trust that came naturally to the young mortician’s apprentice. She would have preferred for him to find Famke immediately; she would most have liked to open her arms and find the girl walking into them, borne forward by a swift stea
mship and a repentant conscience.
But it was not to be, not yet. She must go to the chapel and pray.
Birgit put the letter carefully away in her desk and would have locked it if a key existed. Then, upon reflection, she took the paper out again and tore it into shreds. There must be nothing for prying eyes to find. But that did not much matter; she had already committed every word to memory.
Viggo was raised by Catholic regulation, according to which each time of day had its particular duty and prayer, and to that groundwork the master-mortician had added scientific method. Thus Viggo was nothing if not systematic: He could not approach any task but in an orderly fashion. So, as he marched away from Prophet City, he planned a course for finding Famke.
He started by interviewing Doctor Finstuen, the last person to see her before she vanished. “I’ve already told her husband all I know,” said Finstuen, looking askance at the shabby man who could scarcely string together an English sentence, who reeked of camphor and something suspiciously like alcohol besides. “He tried the hospitals and found nothing; I believe the woman has disappeared.”
Viggo thanked the doctor and asked him to post the handbill that Myrtice had designed. It was the first posting, and he thought the yellow page showed very well against Finstuen’s dark paneling.
With Famke’s picture in place, Viggo headed out to the streets of Salt Lake. To be thorough, he first checked the Deseret hospital and a few genteel restaurants—the same places Heber had made his inquiries—but he knew that widening the field would yield the best results. He had the advantage of knowing names Heber had never heard of, or at least that Heber thought insignificant.
A man who paid not one but three visits to Prophet City, and gave particular attention to Famke upon each of those trips, must be significant. Viggo decided to try tracing Harry Noble, and he made the round of hotels on his second day in the capital city. At the Continental, he learned that Noble had indeed been a guest, and—most interestingly—while staying there he had sent an urgent telegram eastward. There was still a record of it in the desk.