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:
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
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
