The Danish Girl

way of making restitution to his mother, to blue-eyed Gerda Carlsen Waud, who lost her life when her son, Apsley Jr., then just a young man, led her to the lip of Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco to take her photograph in front of the vista and then watched in horror as the ant-gnawed soil crumbled away and flung his mother into the canyon below, down into the deadly Y-branch of a knotty sycamore.

At the Royal Academy in the autumn of 1914, Greta assumed that most people, particularly the administrators, gossiped about two things: the war and her. She always caused a stir, no matter where she went, what with her train of blond hair like a wake behind her. Especially in southern California. Why, it was only last year, when she returned to Pasadena for a summer of tennis and horseback lessons, when one day the boy who drove the butcher wagon caught her eye. His hair was black and curly and his hot hand pulled her up to the front plank-seat and together they rode down to Wilshire Boulevard and back. She watched him manipulate the iron tongs as he unloaded the rib roasts and the racks of lamb at the houses in Hancock Park. On the ride home, not once did the boy try to kiss her, which disappointed Greta, who for the first time had doubts about the length of her yellow hair. At the end of the ride, the boy said only, “So long.” And so Greta shrugged and went to her room. But the next morning, at the breakfast table, her mother, who was thin in the lip, said, “Greta, my dear. Would you please explain this?” Her mother unfolded a piece of stationery from the American Weekly. On it was a cryptic note that simply said, “Does young Miss Greta Waud plan a career in butchery?” For weeks the threat of a society-page exposure shadowed the mansion. Each morning the fingers-in-mouth whistle of the newspaper boy caused the household to freeze in its step. The story never ran, but of course the gossip eventually leaked. For two days the telephone in the upstairs hall rang and rang and rang. Greta’s father could no longer take his lunch at the California Club downtown, and her mother had a devil of a time securing a second source of meat. Soon her parents canceled the summer in California, and Greta returned to Copenhagen in time for the August aurora borealis and the fireworks bursting over Tivoli.

That September at the end of her youth, when war could be heard in the thunderclouds, Greta enrolled at the Royal Academy. On the first day of classes, it surprised Greta when Einar, standing in front of a blackboard dusty with the ghost of a previous lesson, asked her, “And, Miss? Your name?”

When Greta answered the question, Einar-or Professor Wegener, as she thought of him then-marked his class log and moved on. His eyes, which were as brown and wide as a doll’s, returned to her and then jumped away. Judging by his skittishness, Greta began to think he ’d never met an American in his life. She flipped the panel of her hair over her shoulder, as if waving a flag.

Then, early in the school year, someone must have whispered to Einar about her father and the embassy and maybe even the butcher-wagon story-yes, gossip hopped the Atlantic, even then-because Einar became even more awkward around her. It disappointed her that he was proving to be one of those men who found it impossible to be comfortable around a rich girl. This nearly burned her up alive, because she’d never asked to be rich; not that she minded it all the time, but even so. Einar was unable to recommend which paintings to view in Kunstudstill ingen, and incapable of describing the best route to the art supply shop near Kommunehospitalet. She invited him to a reception at the American embassy for a shipbuilder visiting from Connecticut, but he refused. He declined her request for an escort to the opera. He would hardly look at her when they spoke. But she looked at him, both when they met and from far away, through a window as he crossed the academy’s courtyard, his steps short and fast. He was small in the chest, with a round face, skin pale and eyes so dark that Greta had no idea what lay behind them. Simply by speaking to him, Greta could force a flush through Einar’s face from throat to temple. He was childlike, and this fascinated Greta, in part because she had always been so overgrown and outspoken that people had treated her, even when she was little, more or less like an adult. She once asked him, “Are you married, Professor?” and this caused his eyelids to flutter uncontrollably. His lips pushed together as he attempted to say the seemingly unfamiliar word “No.”

The other students whispered about Professor Wegener. “From a family of gnomes,” one girl said. “Was blind until he was fifteen,” said another girl. “Born in a bog,” said a boy who was trying to get Greta’s attention. The boy painted pictures of Greek statues, and Greta couldn’t think of anything more boring, or anyone. When he asked to take her to ride the Ferris wheel in Tivoli she simply rolled her eyes. “Well, Professor Wegener isn’t going to take you, if that’s what you’re waiting for,” the boy replied, kicking his boot against the trunk of an elm.

At home, her mother, ever mindful of the butcher-wagon incident, studied Greta cautiously whenever she returned for the evening, the light of the fireplace revealing nothing in Greta’s eyes. One evening her mother said, “Greta, my dear, if you don’t arrange an escort for your birthday party, then I’m going to have to ask someone for you.” She was needlepointing at the parlor’s hearth, and Greta could hear Carlisle upstairs in his room bouncing a tennis ball. “I’m sure Countess von der Recke ’s son would like to go with you,” Mrs. Waud was saying. “Of course he doesn’t dance, but he ’s a handsome enough boy, as long as you ignore that awful hump, wouldn’t you agree? Greta?” Greta’s mother lifted her pointy face. The fire in the hearth was weak and red, and the tap- tap-tap of Carlisle’s ball filled the room, causing the chandelier to tremble. “When will he stop that?” Mrs. Waud snapped. “Silly tennis ball.” She folded up her needlepoint and stood, her body taking a rigid stance, as if she were an accusatory arrow pointed in the direction of Carlisle’s room. “I suppose there ’s always Carlisle,” she said with a sigh. And then, as if the flames in the fireplace had suddenly leapt higher and brightened the parlor, Mrs. Waud said, “Well, yes, that’s right. There’s always Carlisle. Why not go with Carlisle? He hasn’t found a girl to take, either. You two could go together, the birthday couple.” But Greta, who remained in the parlor’s door frame, protested with her hands and said, “Carlisle? I can’t go with Carlisle! That wouldn’t be any fun. Besides, I’m quite capable of finding my own escort.” Her mother’s eyebrows, which were gray as pigeon feathers, arched up. She said, “Oh, really? Who?”

Greta could feel her nails pressing into the palms of her hands as she said, “You just wait and see. I’ll bring who I want. I’m not going to go with my own brother.” She was playing with her hair, and staring at her mother, and upstairs was the tap-tap-tap of the tennis ball. “Just wait and see,” Greta said. “After all, I’m going to be eighteen.”

The next week Greta caught Einar on the stairs in the Royal Academy. He was holding the white balustrade when she placed her hand on his wrist and said, “May I talk to you?”

It was late and no one else was around and the stairwell was quiet. Professor Wegener was wearing a brown suit with a white collar tinged brown. He was carrying a small blank canvas the size of a book. “We ’re having a supper to celebrate my birthday,” Greta said. “I’m going to be eighteen. My twin brother and me.” And then, “I was wondering if you’d want to come along?”

Einar looked as if he’d eaten something rotten, the color seeping from his face. “Miss, please,” he finally said. “Maybe you ought to enroll in another seminar? It might be best.” He touched his throat, as if something delicate and cherished were dangling there.

It was then that Greta realized that Professor Wegener was in some ways even younger than she. His face was a boy’s, with a small mouth and perpetually red ears. His pale brown hair was hanging impishly over his forehead. Just then something told Greta to cup Einar’s face in her hands. He jumped slightly as her fingers fell on his cheeks, but then he was still. She held her professor’s narrow head, his warm temples between her palms. Greta continued to hold Einar, and he let her. Then she kissed him, the small canvas tucked between them. It was then that Greta knew Einar Wegener was not only the man she wanted to escort her to her eighteenth birthday party but also the man she would marry. “Aren’t you a pretty man,” she said.

“May I go?” Einar asked, pulling away.

“You mean to the party?”

“Well, that’s not-”

“Of course you can go to the party. That’s why I asked you.”

Then, to both their surprise, Einar turned his face to Greta’s for a second kiss.

But before the party, before Greta turned eighteen, Greta’s father decided Europe was no longer safe. Not long after Germany struck out for France, Greta’s father sent his family home from Denmark. “If the Kaiser will roll through Belgium, what’s to stop him from detouring up here?” he asked at the blond-wood table in the dining room. “Good point,” Greta’s mother replied, floating around the room with bundles of shipping straw. Greta, who felt like a fleeing refugee, boarded the Princess Dagmar with nothing in her pocket but a short note from Einar that said only: “Please forget me. It’s probably for the best.”

Now, more than ten years later, in the damp spring of 1925, Greta felt as if she were holding a secret about her husband. The first few weeks after the session with Anna’s dress, Greta and Einar said nothing about it. They