Later, in the afternoon, when Einar was behind the spare bedroom’s door transforming himself into Lili, Greta stripped the bed. She took the sheet, musty and milky with the mixed smell of Einar and Lili and the coffee, and held it over the terrace rail, bringing a match to its corner. Something in her wanted to see it burn away. Soon the sheet was billowing with fire, and Greta watched the flame-edged bits break away as she thought about Teddy and Einar. Scraps of sheet, trailing thin black smoke, were fluttering from the terrace, delicately rising and dipping in the summer breeze and eventually landing in the waxy leaves of the lemon and orange trees in the park below. A woman from the street called to Greta, but she ignored her, and Greta shut her eyes.
She never told Einar about the fire in Teddy’s pottery studio on Colorado Street. In the front office there was a shallow fireplace decorated with Teddy’s orange mission-style tiles. One day in January, in a fit of tidying, Greta crammed the Christmas garlands into the hearth, where a low fire was already smoldering. A white, thick smoke began to rise from the brittle greens. Then there was a crackling that popped with such a buckshot piercing that it brought Teddy from his workshop in the rear. He stood in the double door. In his face Greta could read the question: What are you doing? Then, together, they watched a flame lift out of the smoking garland; then a second reached out like an arm and lit the wicker rocking chair.
Almost instantly the room was on fire. Teddy pulled Greta out to Colorado Street. They weren’t on the sidewalk more than a few seconds when the fists of the flames punched through the twin plate-glass windows. Greta and Teddy stepped into the street, into the traffic, drivers slowing with O-mouthed leers and the horses bucking violently away from the burning building and the cars careening away.
Everything Greta thought of saying just then sounded despicable. An apology would sound empty, she told herself over and over, as the flames rose higher than the streetlamps and the telephone lines, which normally sagged under the weight of blue jays. What a sight it was, and yet there was nothing for Greta to say except “What have I done?”
“I can always start over,” Teddy said. Inside, cracking and exploding and shattering into black bits of nothing, were hundreds of vases and tiles, his two kilns, his file cabinet stuffed with orders, his self-made potter’s life. Still stuck in Greta’s mouth was that empty apology. It felt glued to her tongue, like a cube of ice that wouldn’t melt. For several minutes, she couldn’t say anything else, not until the building’s roof fell in on itself, as lightly as a burning, billowing sheet.
“I didn’t mean to.” She wondered if Teddy would believe her. As a reporter from the American Weekly showed up at the scene, his pencils tucked into the band that held up his shirtsleeves, Greta wondered if anyone in Pasadena would believe her.
“I know,” Teddy said, over and over. He took Greta’s hand in his own and stopped her from saying another thing. They watched the flames pull down the front wall. They watched the firemen unroll their flat, limp hose. Greta and Teddy watched, standing silently, until a damp gurgle rose up in his throat and emerged from his lips as an ominous cough.
CHAPTER Nine
When Einar asked her about it, Greta told him things he couldn’t remember.
“You mean you’ve forgotten?” she said the next morning. “That you asked him to meet you again?”
Einar could recall only part of the previous night. When Greta told him that Lili had stood on her toes to kiss Hans goodnight, he became so embarrassed that he pulled a wire chair to the terrace and, for nearly an hour, stared out over the lemon trees in the park. It didn’t seem possible. It was as if he hadn’t been there.
“He was happy to meet Lili. And he spoke so fondly of Einar. He can’t wait to see you again. Do you remember that?” Greta asked. She hadn’t slept well. Her eyes were nearly lost in their sockets. “You promised him that he could see Lili again today.”
“It wasn’t me,” Einar said. “It was Lili.”
“Yes,” Greta said. “It was Lili. I keep forgetting.”
“If you didn’t want her to visit us here, then why didn’t you say so?”
“Of course I wanted Lili to visit. It ’s just that . . .” and Greta paused. “It’s just that I’m not sure what you want me to do about her.” She turned in the camelback sofa and began to pick at the abalone in the Chinese screen.
“There’s nothing for you to do,” Einar said. “Don’t you see?”
He wondered why Greta couldn’t let Lili come and go without worrying so much. If it didn’t upset him, then why should Greta become concerned? If only she would quietly welcome Lili when it was time to paint her portrait. If only Greta wouldn’t pry with her questions—to say nothing about her eyes—when Lili slipped in and out of the apartment. Sometimes just knowing Greta was on the other side of the door, waiting for Lili to return, was enough to fill her with a moist little fury that collected in the pits of her arms.
And yet Einar knew that he and, yes, Lili, too, needed Greta.
Hans was expecting Lili at four o’clock. They had agreed to meet in front of the municipal casino, which sat on the Promenade du Midi behind the rocky beach. Greta was painting in the living room that morning. Einar was trying to paint in the foyer, which had a view of the backside of St-Michel Church, its stone dark and red with morning shadow. Every fifteen minutes or so Greta would mutter “Goddammit”—like the soft quarter gong of a mantel clock.
When he checked on her, Greta was leaning against a stool. She had several shades of blue along the rim of her canvas. In her lap was her sketch pad, sooty and smudged. Edvard IV was curled at her feet. Greta looked up, her face nearly as white as Edvard’s coat. “I want to paint Lili,” she said.
“She won’t be here until later,” Einar said. “She doesn’t have to meet Hans until four. Maybe after that?”
“Please get her.” Greta wouldn’t look at him, her voice quieter than usual.
For a moment, Einar felt like defying his wife. He had his own painting to finish. He had told himself that he would call up Lili in the afternoon, that he’d spend the morning painting, which he’d been ignoring so much lately, and buying the groceries at the open market. But now Greta wanted him to choose Lili over himself. Greta wanted him to give up his own painting for hers. He didn’t want to. He didn’t long for Lili just then. He felt as if Greta was forcing him to choose. “Maybe you can spend an hour with her before Hans comes by?”
“Einar,” Greta said. “Please.”
Several of the housedresses were now hanging in the bedroom closet. Greta had said they were ugly, their styles suited for nursemaids, but Einar found their plainness pretty, as if the most ordinary woman in the world might wear one. He thumbed through the hangers on the lead pipe, fingering the little starched collars. The one printed with peonies was a bit sheer; the one printed with frogs was big in the bust, and stained. The morning was warm, and Einar wiped his lip on his sleeve. Something made him feel as if his soul were trapped in a wrought-iron cage: his heart nudging its nose against his ribs, Lili stirring from within, shaking herself awake, rubbing her side against the bars of Einar’s body.
He chose a dress. It was white, printed with pink conch shells. Its hem hung to his calf. The white and pink looked pretty against his leg, which had taken color from the French sun.
The key in the door lock was loose in its hole. He thought about locking it, but he knew Greta would never come in without knocking. Once, early in their marriage, Greta walked in on Einar while he was in the bath singing a folksong: There once was an old man who lived on a bog . . . It should have been innocent enough, Einar knew, a young wife finding her husband bathing, happily singing to himself. From the tub, Einar could see the arousal filling Greta’s face. “Don’t stop,” she said, moving closer. But Einar could hardly find the strength to breathe, so exposed he felt, so ashamed, his bony arms crossed over his torso, hands like fig leaves. Greta finally realized what she had done, because she said, leaving the bathroom, “I
’m so sorry. I should have knocked.”
Now Einar removed his clothes, turning his back to the mirror. In the drawer of the bedstand was a roll of white medical tape and scissors. The tape was gooey and textured like a canvas, and Einar pulled out a length and cut it into five pieces. Each piece he stuck to the edge of the bedpost. Then, shutting his eyes and feeling himself slide down through the tunnel of his soul, Einar pulled his penis back and taped it up in the blank space just beneath his groin.
The undergarments were made from a blend of something stretchy Einar was sure the Americans had invented. “There ’s no use in spending good money on silk for things you’ll only wear once or twice,” Greta had said, handing him the package, and Einar had been too shy to disagree.
The panties were cut in a square shape and were silvery like the abalone inlaid in the screen. The garter belt was cotton, fringed with papery lace. It had eight small brass hooks to support the stockings, a mechanism Einar still found thrillingly complicated. When the avocado seeds had begun to rot in their silk handkerchiefs, he had instead started inserting two Mediterranean sea sponges into the shallow cups of his camisole.
Then he pulled the dress over his head.
He’d begun to think of his makeup box as his palette. Brushstrokes to the brow. Light dabs to the lids. Lines on the lips. Blended streaks on the cheek. It was just like painting—like his brush turning a blank canvas into the winter Kattegat.
The clothes and the rouge were important, but the transformation was really about descending that inner tunnel with something like a dinner bell and waking Lili. She always liked the sound of crystal tinkling. It was about climbing out with her dewy hand in Einar’s, reassuring her that the bright clattering world was hers.
He sat on the bed. He closed his eyes. The street was full of rifle noises from motorcars. The wind was rattling the terrace doors. Behind his eyelids he watched colored lights erupt against the black, like the fireworks shot the previous Saturday over Menton’s harbor. He could hear his heart slow. He could feel the gooey tape strapped against his penis. A little flutter of air rose through Einar’s throat. He gasped as goose pimples ran down his arms, down the knuckles of his spine.
With a shiver, he was Lili. Einar was away. Lili would sit for Greta through the morning. She would walk along the quay with Hans, her hand visoring out the August sun. Einar would be only a reference in conversation: “He misses Bluetooth quite a bit,” Lili would say, the world would hear.
Once again there were two. The walnut halved, the oyster shucked open.
Lili returned to the living room. “Thank you for coming so quickly,” Greta said. She spoke to Lili softly, as if she might crack at the sound of a harsh voice. “Sit here,” Greta said, plumping the pillows on the sofa. “Drape one arm over the back of the sofa, and keep your head turned to the screen.”
The session lasted the rest of the morning and through most of the afternoon. Lili, in the corner of the sofa, staring at the scene of abalone shell—a fishing village, a poet in a pagoda by a willow tree—in the Chinese screen. She became hungry but told herself to ignore it. If Greta didn’t stop, neither would she. She was doing this for Greta. It was her gift to Greta, the only thing Lili could give her. She ’d have to be patient. She ’d have to wait for Greta to tell her what to do.
Later that afternoon, Hans and Lili set out on a stroll through Menton’s streets. They stopped at the stands that sold lemon soap and figurines carved from olive wood and packages of candied figs. They spoke of Jutland, of the slate sky and the hog-trampled earth, of the families who lived on the same land for four hundred years, their children marrying one another, their blood thickening to muck. With his father dead, Hans was now Baron Axgil, although he hated the title. “It’s why I left Denmark,” he said. “The aristocracy was dead. If I’d had a sister, I’m sure my mother would have wanted me to marry her.”
“Are you married now?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“But don’t you want to marry?”
“I did, once. There once was a girl I wanted to marry.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died. Drowned in a river.” And then, “Right in front of me.” Hans paid an old woman for a tin of mandarin hand soaps. “But that was quite a while ago. I was practically still a boy.”
Lili could think of nothing to say. There she was, in her housedress, on the street ripe with urine, with Hans.
“Why aren’t you married?” he said. “I would think a girl like you would be married and running a fishery.”
“I wouldn’t want to run a fishery.” She looked up at the sky. How blank and flat it was, cloudless, less blue than Denmark’s. Above Lili and Hans, the sun throbbed. “It’ll be a while before I’m ready to get married. But I want to someday.”
Hans stopped at an open-front store to buy Lili a bottle of orange oil. “But you don’t have forever,” he said. “How old are you?”
How old was Lili? She was younger than Einar, who then was nearly thirty-five. When Lili emerged and Einar withdrew, years were lost: years that had wrinkled the forehead and stooped the shoulders; years that had quieted Einar with resignation. Lili’s posture was the first thing one might notice, its fresh resilience. The second was her soft-voiced curiosity. The third, as Greta reported it, her smell—that of a girl who hadn’t yet soured.
“I really can’t say.”
“You don’t seem like the type of girl who’s too coy to admit her age,” Hans said.
“I’m not,” Lili said. “I’m twenty-four.”
Hans nodded. It was the first fact made up about Lili. As Lili said it, she assumed she’d feel guilty about lying. Instead she felt a bit freer, as if she ’d finally admitted an uncomfortable truth. Lili was twenty-four; she certainly wasn’t as old as Einar. Had she said so, Hans would have thought her a strange fraud.
Hans paid the clerk. The bottle was square and brown, its cork stopper no bigger than the tip of Lili’s pinkie. She tried to pull it out, but couldn’t pry it loose. “Help me?” Lili asked.
“You’re not as helpless as all that,” Hans said. “Give it another tug.”
And Lili did, and this time the little cork popped free and the scent of oranges rose to her nostrils. It made her think of Greta.
“Why don’t I remember you from when I was a boy?” Hans asked.
“You left Bluetooth when I was very young.”
“I suppose that’s right. But Einar never said he had such a beautiful baby cousin.”
When she returned to the apartment, Lili found Greta still in the living room. “Thank God you’re back,” she said. “I want to work some more tonight.” Greta led Lili, who was still holding her packages of the soaps and orange oil, to the camelback sofa. She arranged Lili against the pillows and, with her fingers spread across Lili’s skull like a many-pronged clamp, turned her head toward the Chinese screen.
“I’m tired,” Lili said.
“Then go to sleep,” Greta said, her smock smudged with oily pinks and silvers. “Just lay your head against your arm. I’m going to keep painting a little more.”
The next afternoon, Hans met Lili at the gate of the apartment. Again they walked through the narrow streets that swirled around St-Michel’s hill, then down to the harbor to watch two fishermen sort through their haul of sea urchins. In late August, Menton was hot, the air humid and still. So much warmer than the hottest summer day in Copenhagen, Lili thought. And because Lili had never known such heat—this, after all, was her first trip out of Denmark—she found the weather exhausting. She could feel the housedress sticking to her back as she stood next to Hans, watching the wet net bulging with urchins, Hans’s body so close to her own that she thought perhaps she could feel his hand on her arm, which was burning in the sun. Was it his hand, or something else? Simply a hot breeze?
Two Gypsy children, a boy and a girl, approached Lili and Hans, trying to sell them a little carved elephant. “Real ivory,” they said, pointin
g at the elephant’s tusk. “A deal for you.” The kids were small and dark around the eyes, and they stared at Lili in a way that made her feel unsafe.
“Let’s go,” she said to Hans, who laid his hand on the warm wet small of her back, steering her away. “I think I need to lie down.”
But when Lili returned home, Greta was waiting for her. She posed Lili in front of her easel, settling her on the sofa. “Sit still,” Greta said. “I’m not done.”
The next day Hans drove Lili up the corniche to Villefranche, his Targa Florio’s spoke-wheels shooting shellrocks down to the sea. “Next time don’t leave Einar up in Denmark!” he yelled, his voice as pebbly as it was when he was a boy. “Even good old Einar should have a holiday!” The wind was warm in Lili’s face, and by the late afternoon again she was feeling weak in the stomach. Hans had to rent a room at the Hôtel de l’Univers for Lili to rest in. “I’ll be just downstairs having a coffee and an anisette,” he said, tipping his hat. Later, when she emerged from the narrow room, Lili found Hans off the lobby in the Restaurant de la Ré gence. She was barely out of her dreamy state and only said, “Sometimes I just don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
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