that time her life had begun anew. How could she tell Greta that?
“I feel like going out for a walk,” Lili said, standing.
“I’m not done yet,” Greta said. “Sit for just a few more minutes?”
“I feel like going now, before it gets dark.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“All alone?”
Lili nodded, an inexhaustible doubleness welling up inside her: she both loved and resented Greta for caring so much. It was as simple as that.
She opened the wardrobe’s closet for her coat and scarf. Greta began to tidy her paints and her brushes and her easel. Edvard IV started barking at Lili’s ankles. The last angled sunlight shot into the apartment. The horn of the Bornholm ferry called, and while she pulled on a blue felt coat with bamboo-hook buttons, Lili thought about walking to the dock and climbing the gangway and taking a seat in the cabin that looked across the bow toward that little island in the sea.
But she wouldn’t set sail, at least not yet. “I’ll be back,” she heard herself saying.
“Yes, well… good.” And then, “You’re sure you don’t want company?”
“Not tonight.”
“All right then.” Greta hoisted Edvard IV into her arms and stood in the center of the apartment, in a sinking pane of light, as Lili prepared to leave her. Lili felt the need to escape. Henrik had told her he’d be working late in his studio. “Look for the light,” he wrote in a note smuggled into the apartment in the folded laundry.
“Will you be gone long?”
Lili shook her head. “I’m not really sure.” She was ready, buttoned into her coat. She would have to tell Greta about Henrik, but not tonight. “Good night,” she said, feeling something, and when she opened the door she found Hans, his knuckle raised and about to knock.
He came in. Lili remained at the door. He looked tired, his tie loose. He asked them to join him for dinner. Lili said, “I was just on my way out.” Greta said that Lili had become quite busy lately. She sounded angry about it, from the way she told Hans about Lili’s new job at Fonnes bech’s department store, standing behind the perfume counter. “They hired me because I speak French,” Lili explained, still in her coat. The manager at Fonnesbech’s, a woman whose black blouse flattened out her breasts, asked Lili to speak to the customers with an accent. “Speak like a Frenchwoman. Pretend you’re someone else. The store is a stage!” Each day Lili arranged the cut-glass bottles on a silver tray and held her eyes low and quietly asked the passing shoppers if they’d like a dab to the wrist.
“I should be going,” Lili said. She moved to kiss Hans goodbye.
He said he’d like to join her walk, but then Greta said that Lili wanted to be alone. “I’ll come just for a bit,” he said. “Then I’ll be back, Greta, and we’ll have some supper.”
On the street, the night was damp. Across the way a woman was knocking on Dr. Moller’s door. Lili and Hans hesitated outside the Widow House’s door. “Where to?” he said.
“I was headed to Christianshavn. But you don’t have to come with me,” she said. “It’s too far.”
“How’s Greta been lately?”
“You know Greta. Always the same.”
“That’s not true. Is she settling back all right?”
Lili stopped and wondered what he meant. Wasn’t that the frustrat ingly wonderful thing about Greta? That she was always the same-always painting, always planning, always pulling back her hair?
“She’s fine.” And then, “I think she’s angry with me.”
“Why?”
“Sometimes I wonder why she let me go through with all of this in the first place. If she thought everything was going to be the same afterward.”
“She never thought that,” Hans said. “She always knew what it meant.”
The woman, whose arm was in a sling, was admitted to Dr. Moller’s house. Lili heard a shout from the sailor’s window above.
Then Hans asked, “Where are you going, Lili?” He took her hands between his and began rubbing away the cold. Sometimes Lili was surprised that she didn’t simply crumble beneath the touch of a man. She could hardly believe that her flesh and bone could withstand the scrutiny of a man’s fingertips. She felt this even more with Henrik, whose hands had pressed every knuckle of her spine. His hands had cupped her shoulders and she had expected herself to fold up like a piece of paper, but it didn’t happen, and Henrik had continued touching her, kissing her.
“We’ve known each other a long time,” Hans said.
“I think I’ve fallen in love,” Lili began. She told Hans about Henrik, about how they would kiss in his studio in the evening and all Lili could think of was never again returning to the Widow House.
“I thought that might be the case,” Hans said. “Why haven’t you told Greta?”
“She’d be jealous. She’d try to stop it.”
“How do you know?”
“She tried to stop it once before.”
“Wasn’t that a long time ago?”
Lili thought about this. He was right, of course. Even so, he didn’t know Greta the way she did. He hadn’t endured the slanting glare every time she set out from the apartment, or when she returned late at night. What was it Greta once said to Lili? “Obviously I’m not your mother, but just the same I’d like to know where you’re keeping yourself these days.”
“Doesn’t she have a right to know?” Hans asked.
“Greta?” She wasn’t always like that, Lili had to admit. Wasn’t there the time just last week when Greta met Lili at the employees’ entrance of Fonnesbech’s and said, “Sorry to change our plans, but Hans and I are going to have dinner. I’m sure you won’t mind fending for yourself.” Hadn’t Greta said, the other day when they were waking from a nap, “I had a dream about you getting married.”
“Can I walk you to the bridge?” Hans said.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Go back up and see Greta.” Then it occurred to her how close he and Greta had become: the shared meals at the long table; the quiet evenings in the Widow House, playing poker until Lili returned; the way Greta had uncharacteristically begun to rely on him, saying more and more often, “Let me check with Hans.”
“Do you want to marry her?” Lili said.
“I haven’t asked her.”
“But you will?”
“If she lets me.”
Lili wasn’t jealous; why should she be? She felt relief, although at the same time she felt the pull of a rushing memory: Hans and Einar playing outside the farmhouse; the apron hanging next to the stovepipe; Greta nearly chasing Einar through the halls of the Royal Academy; Greta trotting down the aisle of St. Alban’s Church on their wedding day, always in a hurry. Lili’s life had flipped itself over, and she was grateful.
“She won’t marry me until she knows that you are settled and living well.”
“She said that?”
“She didn’t have to.”
There was another shout from the sailor above, and the slam of a window. Lili and Hans smiled. In the streetlight Hans looked as young as a boy. His cowlick stood up, his cheeks pink on the point. Lili could see his breath, could see her own breath mixing with his. “You’re a whore!” the sailor yelled, as he always did.
“Have I done anything wrong?” Lili asked.
“No,” Hans said, releasing her hands, kissing her goodbye on the forehead. “But neither has Greta.”
CHAPTER Twenty-six
