which Greta sometimes envied out of the corner of her eye.
The orchestra was tuning up, preparing for its long descent into
“We don’t have to go. I just thought-”
The lights dimmed, and the conductor made his way to the head of the pit. For the next five hours Einar sat rigid, his legs pressed together, his program tight in his fist. Greta knew he was thinking of Lili, as if she were a younger sister away for a very long time but now due home. Tonight Anna was singing Brangane, Isolde ’s maidservant. Her voice made Greta think of coals in a stove, and although it wasn’t pretty like a soprano’s, it was warm at the edges and correct; how else should a maidservant sound? “Some of the most interesting women I know aren’t especially beautiful,” she would later comment to Einar, when they were in bed, when Greta’s hand was beneath the heat of his hip, when she was on the steep cliff of sleep and she couldn’t properly think of where she was, Copenhagen or California.
The next day, when Greta returned from a meeting with another gallery owner, a man who was too mousy and insignificant even to pique Greta with his rejection, she went to kiss Einar. There, on his cheek and in his hair, was the ghost of Lili, the lingering scent of mint and milk.
“Was Lili here again?”
“The whole afternoon.”
“What did she do?”
“She went over to Fonnesbech’s and bought herself a few things.”
“All alone?” Greta said.
Einar nodded. He had finished painting for the day and was in the walnut-armed reading chair,
Greta didn’t say anything. She felt as if someone were explaining the rules of a new parlor game: she was listening and nodding but actually thinking to herself, I hope I understand this better once the game begins.
“You want her to go, don’t you?” Einar asked. “It ’s okay with you if she goes instead of me?”
Greta, who was twisting the tips of her hair into a knot that would later snarl, said, “I don’t mind at all.”
At night Greta would lie in bed, her arm over Einar’s chest. When they married, Einar’s grandmother had given them a beechwood sleigh bed. It was a bit small, like everyone in the Wegener family except Einar’s father. Over the years Greta grew used to sleeping at a diagonal, her legs stacked across Einar’s. Sometimes, when she doubted this life she had created for herself in Denmark, she would feel as if she were a little girl, and Einar, with his china- doll face and his pretty feet, her most beloved toy. When he slept, his lips would pout and glisten. His hair would hang like a wreath around his face. Greta couldn’t count the nights she had stayed up watching his long lashes fluttering while he was dreaming.
Deep in the night their bedroom was silent except for the horn of the ferry leaving for Bornholm, the Baltic island where her grandmother had first come from. More and more, Greta would lie awake thinking about Lili, about her rural face with the tremblingly bold upper lip and her eyes so brown and watery that Greta couldn’t tell whether or not they were on the verge of tears. About Lili’s fleshy little nose, which somehow made her look like a girl still growing into a woman’s body.
Lili turned out to be even shyer than Einar. Or at least at first. Her head would dip when she spoke, and sometimes she would become too nervous to say anything at all. When asked a question as simple as “Did you hear about the terrible fire on the Royal Greenland Trading Company’s docks?” she would stare at Greta or Anna and then turn away. Lili preferred to write notes and prop them around the apartment, leaving postcards bought from the blind woman outside Tivoli’s iron gates on the pickled-ash wardrobe or on the little ledge of Greta’s easel.
And once:
Greta returned the notes, standing them against a bowl of pears just before leaving the apartment:
In the evenings Einar and Greta would dine with friends at their favorite cafe along Nyhavns Kanal. Sometimes he ’d become a little drunk on aquavit and boast childishly of the success of one of his exhibitions. “All the paintings sold!” he’d say, reminding Greta of Carlisle, who would endlessly boast of a good grade in geometry, or a handsome new friend.
But Einar’s talk would embarrass Greta, who tried not to listen whenever money was discussed; after all, what was there to say? Couldn’t they pretend it didn’t matter to either of them? She would glare at Einar across the table, salmon bones bare and oily on the platter. She’d never told Einar about the trust her father had sent her off to Denmark with, to say nothing of the income wired into an account at Landmandsbanken at the end of each orange season-not out of selfishness, but because she was too concerned that all that money would transform her into someone else, someone whose company she herself wouldn’t enjoy. One regrettable day she bought the whole apartment building, the Widow House, but she could never bring herself to tell Einar, who each month delivered the rent check to a clerk at Landmandsbanken with a bit of a grudge in his step. Even Greta knew this had been a mistake, but how could she fix it now?
When Einar became excited he’d knock his fists against the table, his hair falling around his face; the collar of his shirt would split open, revealing his smooth pink chest. He was without any fat on his body, except for his soft breasts, which were as small as dumplings. Greta would pat his wrist, trying to urge him to slow down on the aquavit-the way her mother had done when Greta was a girl drinking Tennis Specials at the Valley Hunt Club. But Einar never seemed to understand her signals, and instead he’d bring the slim glass to his lips and smile around the table, as if seeking approval.
Physically, Einar was an unusual man; this Greta knew. She would think this when his shirt would split open further, and everyone at the table could get a peek of his chest, which was as obscene as the breast of a girl a few days into puberty. With his pretty hair and his chin smooth as a teacup, he could be a confusing sight. He was so beautiful that sometimes old women in Kongens Have would break the law and offer him tulips picked from a public bed. His lips were pinker than any of the sticks of color Greta could buy on the third floor of Magasin du Nord.
“Tell them why you won’t be at the ball,” Greta said one night at dinner. It was warm, and they were eating at a table outside in the light of a torch. Earlier, two boats in the canal had collided, and the night smelled of kerosene and split wood.
“The ball?” Einar asked, tilting his head.
“Greta says your cousin is coming from Jutland,” said Helene Albeck, a secretary at the Royal Greenland Trading Company. She was compact in her little green dress with the low-hanging waist; once, when she was drunk, she took Einar’s hand and pressed it against her lap. Einar resisted instantly, which pleased Greta, who had witnessed the incident through a slat in the kitchen door.
“My cousin?” Einar said, sounding confused. His upper lip became dewy, and he said nothing, as if he’d forgotten how to speak.
This happened more than once. Greta would mention Lili to a friend, even to Anna, and Einar’s face would pinch up, as if he had no idea who Lili was. He and Greta never spoke about it afterwards, about his childlike miscomprehension: Lili who? Oh, yes, Lili. My cousin? Yes, my cousin, Lili. The next day the same thing would occur again. It was as if their little secret were really just Greta’s little secret, as if she were plotting behind Einar’s back. She considered discussing it with him directly but decided against it. Perhaps she feared she would crush him. Or that he would resent her intrusion. Or maybe her greatest fear was that Lili would disappear forever, the detachable white collar fluttering as she fled, leaving Greta alone in the Widow House.
CHAPTER Three
