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Guards, workingmen, Famke and Albert: The only person whose presence among the ruins could not be explained was a tall gray-complected man in a dark suit and hat. He carried a long cane with a metal tip and he was poking it here and there into the ashes. Albert watched him moodily as Famke, on her knees, dug through the rubble. The workers and guards politely pretended not to notice what she was doing, thinking perhaps that she was looking for some last remnant of her fictional mother. The man did not look at her either, as her head was covered with the yellow shawl and they were too far apart for any but the most startling features to stand out. Still, Albert felt vaguely as if the other man had insulted Famke in some way, and he wondered what right such a fellow in genteel but shabby costume had among this royal ruin.
The explanation came clear as the gray man drew closer, poking that long cane into the debris. The wind blew past him and up to Albert, who nearly gagged at the strong stench of camphor and formaldehyde. Obviously the man was a kind of mortician, or a mortician’s assistant; an apprentice to death, Albert thought, and savored the phrase. An apprentice to death, himself impregnated with needlefuls of scientific fluids that saved the body from the corrupting rot of blood. He must be out to drum up some business, though any reasonable professional would expect all the bodies to have been removed from this place by now. He passed on without looking at Albert or Famke.
Famke rocked back in the mud. “Værsgo. Here. Albert!”
He looked down into her face, so delightfully full of life and color. The undertaker hadn’t registered with her, beyond a brief cough at the smell he carried.
“Albert, see,” she insisted, blinking up against the sun.
He avoided the beseechment he expected to find in her eyes. “What do you have there?” he asked, as one might ask a child.
She was holding something about as big as her fist. Albert watched her spit on it, then rub it on her sleeve, and at last hold it up to him. “Glass,” she said simply.
He examined the thing. It was oddly shaped and heavy, a pale shade of green under the grime. He turned it over in both hands. “Yes, I see,” he said, though clearly he wasn’t seeing what she wanted him to.
Anxiously, Famke got to her feet. “Glass,” she said again. She turned the lump so he was looking into the spot she’d cleaned. “Some melted. In the fire. Some is from windows, some from glass boxes and other things.” Excitement was chopping up her English. “Does it not resemble ice?”
There was a brief pause as Albert took this in.
“Darling—Famke—you’re brilliant!” It was his turn to fall to his knees; not to embrace her, as his words might have led her to hope, but to scrabble through the ashes in turn. “You clever, clever girl—there’s bushels of it here!”
“I know this,” Famke said modestly. “I saw such glass when some boys burned down the Dragør church. Now you may use it for ice in the painting. And,” she added on a practical note, “we may keep the windows closed.”
As the guards continued to look the other way, Famke and Albert collected as many molten shards as they could carry. They took the largest ones they could find and filled Famke’s small pocket, then the multiple flaps of Albert’s coat. Famke unbuttoned her bodice to tuck a cold lump inside. When they left the plain of rubble and made their way home with the booty, their movements were slow, freighted, and they sank deeper into the mud. But the new prospect made Albert very happy, and Famke’s heart caught some of that infectious warmth. She imagined it lighting up her chest like an electric globe.
She was feeling hopeful, in fact, and as she and Albert left, she noticed the gray mortician; he seemed to be lifting a scrap of embroidery from a heap of ash, and she wondered if perhaps he had really lost someone in the flames. When he stood, she turned a dazzling smile upon him. He was clearly surprised, but he touched his hat to her in a gentlemanly fashion, releasing a new wave of pungent scent that made both Famke and Albert cough and the glass in their pockets rattle.
The mortician reached into his pocket, simultaneously depositing the embroidered wisp and withdrawing a stiff cardboard square. “In case of need,” he said mournfully, and passed by them like the god of death, poking his cane into mound after mound. They watched him pass through the iron gates and disappear into the fog.
Famke translated the card for Albert:
EMBALMING PERFORMED
• reasonable rates • lifelike appearance • excellent value GAMLE KONGEVEJ 16
“It would appear he’s in need of his own services,” Albert joked, and Famke was so glad to feel she had pleased him that she laughed right along.
Kapitel 5
If I say that the houses did not disgust me, I tell you all I remember of them; for I cannot recollect any pleasurable sensations they excited; or that any object, produced by nature or art, took me out of myself.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT,
LETTER FROM DENMARK
Thus it began, their best time together. Now Albert had models for both Nimue and her ice; around Famke’s feet he painted the Christiansborg glass many times larger than it was, filling in his little squares with vivid and detailed renderings of all he saw there. Famke, for her part, was glad not to be quite so chilled while posing, and even to have a day of rest here and there while Albert worked on the ice. She had caught a cold, or one had caught her, and it wouldn’t let go.
She coughed and blew her nose until Albert was quite exasperated. “Darling, really,” he said; but then he fell ill, too, and resorted to the comforts of long dark hours of bed rest and Famke’s loving ministrations. They spent candlelit time together poring over Pre-Raphaelite prints; but in the morning, all was work again.
On one blue afternoon, as he refined the lines of Famke’s streaming hair, Albert even mentioned his plans for the future. He rubbed out a red strand with a handful of bread, then bit the bread absentmindedly and said, chewing, “I quite like your country. I am finding it every bit as rich in inspiration as I’d hoped. Perhaps I will come back.”
Famke felt suddenly more naked than before, and completely tongue-tied. Here it was, what she was longing to hear: almost a promise for the future.
“Of course,” Albert ruminated, “that can be only after I am accepted as a member of the Royal Academy. After I am able to live from the proceeds of my work. I might even do some portraits then—let the ladies’ commissions pay for the models’ fees.”
This was an interesting notion. Aside from her room and board, Albert had not yet given Famke an Øre for her work; but then she did not wish him to. He had once explained that ladies posed only for portraits, for which they paid, while the hired models who lent themselves to narrative paintings belonged to a category just slightly removed from the Ludere strolling up and down the frozen canals. “Not you, of course,” he had said hastily, seeing her crestfallen. Somehow, not being paid removed her from the unpleasant models’ class; and Famke generally preferred pictures that told stories anyway.
She summoned all her courage to ask now, “Will you paint me again?”
“Of
