"Not too old for us to—well, you know what I mean." She looked away, then took another deep breath, as if about to deliver a message that was not only generally outrageous but also against her own nature. "So I'm suggesting that Knud Erik, Edith, and I move in here and that the two of us get married. So that—so that things can be put right." Suddenly she slumped. Her clenched fists opened up. She'd delivered her message. Now, exhausted, she awaited her fate.
Everything inside him contracted. This he hadn't expected. He sensed that the situation demanded an immediate and unequivocal answer, but nothing approaching it emerged. Instead, he asked, "But do you love me?" He put the question in the dutifully polite tone he'd have used with a stranger; at this moment they didn't trust each other.
"Do you love me?" she retorted sharply.
"I've missed you," he said, and his voice grew thick. He couldn't come up with a declaration of love; nor was there any way he could express the chaos inside him more precisely. The way it came out, it sounded like a plea for mercy.
A moment of silence followed. A shiver ran through her, then she grabbed his hands and squeezed them between hers. "I've missed you too." She leaned into him and gave way to tears. Unburdened now, she could surrender. He stroked her back mechanically. His own paralysis hadn't abated. He didn't share her relief. They'd reached a point where he felt he couldn't possibly deny her request. His answer had practically been dictated to him.
Did he want it himself? The question was as unanswerable as whether or not he loved her.
"That's how it'll be then," he said eventually. He tried to give his words the ring of reassurance, but she couldn't possibly have missed their undertone of resignation.
She'd won. But the victory came without joy for either of them.
The next day they appeared together in public. As they strolled down Kirkestræde, she held his arm and he bore himself tall and straight—not out of pride, but to avoid looking decrepit next to her. From then on, she regularly visited his house with Knud Erik and Edith, and all of them dined together. She didn't stay the night. They'd never yet spent a night together and they weren't going to start now. The eyes of the town still rested on them. They both felt there was a line that shouldn't be crossed. They weren't married yet.
Knud Erik's attitude to Albert changed unexpectedly, as if now, for the first time, he realized that his father would never return. Someone else was going to take over the empty space at his mother's side. Before, he'd felt magnetically drawn to Albert. Now the magnet had switched, and it repelled him.
He joined his mother reluctantly on their visits to Albert, and when Albert called on them in Snaregade he acted introverted. It was as though he wanted each of them to himself, separately. When his mother's world and Albert's finally met, he felt he'd lost ownership of both. His old ease with Albert reemerged only when the two of them were alone together.
Albert didn't mention this to Klara. So much remained unuttered between them. The unspoken is sometimes the preferred language of lovers, but for him it was an unknown tongue for which he had no dictionary. He constantly felt a pressure that he couldn't fathom. They neither kissed nor embraced in Knud Erik's presence. They'd never done so before, either, but then they'd had something to hide. Now that everything was out in the open, they didn't exchange so much as a reassuring squeeze of the hand.
Was there really nothing more between them than the raw passion that came only in sudden, illicit bursts? Ejaculation without relief—could that be all they had? He was unfamiliar with the conventions of marriage and could not interpret what was happening between them.
When he'd stayed with Cheng Sumei, there'd been a certain measured respect in their behavior toward each other, which he'd attributed to the Chinese in her—and perhaps to the Dane in him. Yet when they sat at table, telegrams and documents covered with freight rates spread before them, they'd sometimes both look up and break into a sudden surprised smile, as though seeing each other for the first time. They'd never taken each other for granted.
They'd been intimate, but intimacy isn't the same as routine. There was always a spark that glowed.
He missed her.
"Was she beautiful, your Chinese lady?" Klara asked him once, out of the blue. The question startled Albert. He hadn't known that she'd heard the old rumors. He shrugged. He didn't feel like talking about Cheng Sumei with Klara. "Did she have tiny little Chinese feet?"
"No, her feet weren't bound. That was only for the daughters of rich men; poor girls escaped. She provided for herself from a very young age."
Klara stared into the distance. Apparently this piece of information had knocked her off course.
"So she was an orphan?" It was a word she'd avoided when he'd asked about her childhood on Birkholm.
"You could say that."
"So she was all alone in the world," Klara said.
He'd expected more questions, not only about Cheng Sumei's appearance, but also about their feelings for each other. He dreaded the conversation moving into a minefield where each reply might trigger unfavorable comparisons and fits of jealousy. And he knew how he'd have replied: with icy distance in his voice. This was private territory.
Instead, she fell silent. Several days passed before she asked him again. Her questioning now pursued a new direction, as though she'd been thinking something through.
"Was the Chinese lady very rich?" she asked.
He explained that she had become rich by marrying Presser and that she'd carried on his business very successfully after his death.
"She was an independent woman," he said. "A businesswoman."
"All alone in the world," Klara said. "And then she became rich and independent." She spoke thoughtfully, as though this brief account of Cheng Sumei was leading her to a conclusion about herself.
Christmas was coming. For Albert, the holiday was a pretext for postponing the wedding to an as-yet-undecided date in the new year. Christmas had to be got out of the way first. Then they could get married and she could move in with him. She wouldn't be bringing much from Snaregade. Compared to his, her belongings were mostly junk. But perhaps they meant something to her?
He didn't ask, but he noticed that she looked at his home in a new light. She wandered about, assessing things; tentatively, she'd move an armchair or a table—just by a few inches—or shift a sofa when she thought he wasn't looking. But her eyes announced changes that no ruler could measure.
His world stood on the brink of a great upheaval. It was the only world he had left, a reduced kingdom, but still a kingdom, built just as much on habits as on furniture and floor space. Now he'd have to give up those habits too.
The distance between them grew. Every time she mentioned a possible date for their wedding, he made an evasive reply. His reluctance was blatant. He'd given his overall "I do," but it had been followed by a long series of small, unspoken "I don'ts."
When he thought about the moment he'd have to visit Pastor Abildgaard and ask him to read their banns in church, everything inside him cringed. The minister with whom he'd shared so many discussions, the pastor whose duty to call on the bereaved he'd taken over in the dark years of the war because Abildgaard hadn't the strength to take care of his flock as a minister should, the man he'd seen in tears: now Albert would have to stand before him with all his own weaknesses laid bare.
Abildgaard was bound to be ironic, condescending even. He'd undoubtedly have the nerve to play the father figure: oh yes, he'd be unable to resist getting back at him by delivering some lecture to the far older and more experienced man who'd opposed him on countless issues in the past. And though Albert believed deep down that he'd left the power struggles of Marstal behind him long ago, he was still loath to turn up as a supplicant at the minister's office.
He hadn't altered that much. He hadn't surrendered the last of his fighting spirit. He didn't want to sacrifice his own dignity. Yet he knew he had to do it, because the dignity of another was at stake. Klara would have to live lo
nger with a ruined reputation than he would. She had a small boy and an even smaller girl to take care of. She'd still have a life to live, long after he was gone. This was what her visit to him that day was really about. Her reticence abandoned and her self-effacement put aside, she had indeed been a mother defending her young.
They spent Christmas Eve in Prinsegade. The table was set in the dining room with a damask cloth, silver, and china. The Christmas tree stood in the drawing room. Albert had asked Knud Erik to help him decorate it, and the boy had done so, but with his new sullenness. Albert had a hard time getting used to it: he didn't understand it, and he caught himself interpreting it as ingratitude, a reaction that was entirely alien to him: he'd never before believed that the recipients of his gifts owed him anything. The result was that he grew irritated with both himself and Knud Erik, and he scolded the boy several times. He didn't notice that Knud Erik himself was actually ashamed of his own sulkiness and wanted to snap out of it, but couldn't. Albert's sudden reprimands only made it worse.
They carried their bad mood with them to the dinner table. Knud Erik didn't utter a word during the entire meal. Klara had returned to her old, passive self, behaving like a servant who has found herself at the master's table and expects to be sent back to the kitchen at any moment. Albert was gloomy and tense, filled with dark premonitions. His housekeeper waited on them, her face tight with disapproval. When he saw Klara shooting her a furtive glance, Albert knew immediately that his first task as her husband would be to dismiss the servant who'd been with him fifteen years.
Edith climbed onto his lap and started beating the rice pudding with her spoon. "Daddy," she said, and pulled his beard with her other hand. He said nothing. He'd given up trying to correct her.
They rose from the table for the traditional dance around the Christmas tree, but it was too wide for them to link hands around it, and by tacit agreement they avoided trying. Nor did they sing carols. We'll never be a family, Albert thought. We're just the wreckage of other families. She's a widow with two children, and I'm an eccentric hermit who should never have left his cave.
There were few presents under the tree. Klara hadn't bought many, and their new situation had deprived Albert of the joy of giving. He'd bought Klara a pair of leather gloves and Knud Erik a box of tin soldiers. Edith got a doll. There was a tobacco pouch for him. They unwrapped these gifts in silence and thanked one another politely.
When she left to go home to Snaregade, Klara turned in the doorway.
"We need to agree on a date, and you have to talk to Pastor Abildgaard."
They saw more of each other between Christmas and New Year's Day. Albert's sister visited from Svendborg, and later they went to see his friend Emanuel Kroman. Everyone regarded them as a couple now. People took it for granted that a wedding was imminent, but no one was indiscreet enough to inquire about the date.
The oppressive atmosphere between them did not improve, but they eventually agreed on a Saturday in late January. Once the New Year celebration was over, he'd have to pay a visit to the parsonage and make sure their banns were read.
January was relentlessly gray, with temperatures that hovered near the freezing point. Showers of rain and sleet swept through the deserted streets, and the shops kept their lights on all day. The parsonage in Kirkestræde stayed lit too. Albert often passed it in the rain, but he didn't knock on the door. As with Klara's house in Snaregade in the days of their estrangement, he could neither stay clear of it nor enter. It wasn't just the meeting with Abildgaard. Surely he could survive that, blast it. No, something different and more powerful held him back, but no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to articulate what it was. He felt as if he was standing on the top of a steep cliff, waiting to step into the void. The mute instinct for survival: that was what prevented him from taking the fatal step. Nothing else.
"Why didn't you marry the Chinese lady?"
He didn't have to reply. He could see in her face that she'd already decided on an explanation of her own. "That's what you're like, isn't it?" she said. "You never marry them."
"Have you spoken to Pastor Abildgaard?" she asked the next time he came by Snaregade.
He looked away. "Not yet."
"Why not?"
He said nothing. A feeling of impotence overwhelmed him—shame too. He had no idea how to reply. She bit her lower lip. She didn't know how to open him up. Unaware of his fear and resistance, she focused instead on her own sense of being jilted.
"I'm not good enough for you?" she asked. "Is that it?" He didn't reply. "You promised." Her gaze grew firm.
"I'll do it." He was mumbling, a rare tone of voice for a man used to shouting orders on deck in high winds and who'd not dropped the habit once he came ashore. But this answer was worse than none at all.
"I don't know what to believe," she said, shaking her head. "I don't suppose it matters, anyway. I thought that was what you wanted."
"I'll do it," he repeated.
He hated himself and her because she was addressing him like a child, and it was his own fault.
"So do it, then. Do it tomorrow."
Unable to bear the humiliating situation any longer, he rose and left without saying goodbye.
"You're ashamed of me!" she screamed after him.
ON SHROVETIDE EVE the lamp above Albert's door was lit. To us this was an invitation: according to the traditional, unwritten law of Shrovetide Eve, every lit door was an open door. If you didn't want visits from revelers in fancy dress, you switched off the light.
The housekeeper answered our knocking and let us in. It looked as if she'd made preparations for our arrival. The punch bowl awaited us on a stand. We were just settling on the sofa and the chairs that had been set out for visitors when our host entered. We saw the surprise on his face—unpleasant surprise, disapproval even—and realized immediately that we'd made a mistake.
It could be that Albert and his housekeeper had misunderstood each other. But later we speculated that she'd let us in as an act of revenge. The prospect of another woman in the house couldn't have thrilled her, and this was her way of paying him back.
Obviously, we should have made our apologies and left at that point. But we were full of a particular energy that night. We weren't that easy to control.
Was it our fault that Albert later forgot himself? No, it was mostly his own. The scandal was his, not ours. You have to be prepared to put up with a few japes at Shrovetide. We meant no harm—well, not much. Besides, our host was welcome to give as good as he got, and join in the fun. It was all just high spirits. We certainly bore no responsibility for what followed.
We had nothing but sympathy for Albert Madsen. He'd been good to Marstal and we didn't begrudge him taking a young wife in his old age, if that was what he was up to, and not something worse. Which his procrastination over marrying Klara Friis certainly seemed to indicate.
When he opened the door and found us in his drawing room, one hell of a sight met his eyes. A cow was sitting on his sofa, yanking on a springy coil of yellow paper hanging from its tar-black nose. Next to it, a Spanish señorita was brandishing a fan. Her red lips, painted on the outside of the silk stocking pulled over her head, were parted slightly, as though inviting a kiss. A thickset farmer's wife with a lampshade for a hat stood in the middle of the floor with hands—in gloves sized for a man—planted on her hips. The room had filled with the smell of glue, naphthalene, and other stranger odors. A caveman was leaning his club against the wall, while a Chinese lady with slanted eyes painted in black on a yellow paper mask pulled a huge pair of knitting needles from a ball of wool on the top of her head and clashed them together. In a corner of the room a two-legged pink pig snorted contentedly, while the pirate beside it raised his sword as though proposing to slaughter it with one blow.
"Evening, Li'l Albert," we yelled in unison.
Li'l Albert said nothing. A bad sign.
The housekeeper poured punch from the bowl into glasses, which she passed aro
und to us. We'd made holes in our masks and stockings where our mouths were, and we'd brought our own straws so that none of us would have to take off his mask and reveal his face.
After all, it was Shrovetide.
Most of us present that night were women: great broad-shouldered women with huge breasts. Their weight should have made us topple, but instead we pushed and battered them about like goose-down pillows. We wore woolen skirts with velvet ribbons, tight blouses, embroidered aprons, and shawls long enough to cover head, chest, and back—all from the bottom of the dressing-up box, mended and remended over the years, and brought out especially for this evening.
We swayed our hips and fluttered our hands with the giddy abandon that comes not just from emptying so many punch bowls in the course of an evening, but from the odd feeling of freedom that floods a man when he dresses up in women's clothing. Hidden beneath capes and bonnets, caps, lampshades, and wigs, with masks that were nothing but red-painted pouts and wide-open eyes with black lashes the size of fans, we snuggled up to the nearest manly chest, while cooing like doves and delivering daring remarks—as close to outright obscenity as we could get away with in our character of virtuous ladies—in falsetto voices.
***
The crudest reveler of all that evening was the bride. She wore her petticoat on the outside, and a flesh-colored garter belt circled her massive waist: two breasts swung in opposite directions behind her cream-colored silk bodice, and every time she swirled coquettishly they'd collide with a loud slap. She wore a blond wig with thick braides sticking out, and her starched veil stood as stiff as a frozen snowstorm of lace.
She went up to Captain Madsen and tweaked his earlobe. He pulled back his head with an irritated movement.