paint in watercolor anyway,” he said, and his argument was so nearly logical that she capitulated and put a tiny, all but invisible dot of pale blue in the farthest reach of the left-hand corner.
Behind her on the ladder, he praised the dot extravagantly. “That’s splendid, that’s really wonderful! Such sensitivity, such finesse—you are a born artist. In that little spot you have captured an eternal truth about the nature of ice, about its essence and symbolic weight in human and natural history . . .”
“Stop!” She laughed as his hands reached up, caressing first her bottom, then her waist, then dipping into that controversial thatch of hair. “I must concentrate on my art!”
That day she made two dots more before Albert pulled her off the ladder he’d so insistently pushed her up. He took her to bed, where both were very happy.
Over the next days, Famke discovered that she liked painting. Albert seemed genuinely grateful for her help with the dreary ice, especially as she was willing to lay the base of blue-white and mottle it over while he walked the streets in search of breakfast or inspiration. She was careful to keep her brushstrokes as smooth and flat as the white gesso, and enjoyed squeezing the clean-smelling paint from its metal tubes—rather like milking a cow, she thought at first; then, when more practiced, like holding a girl’s breast so long that a drop emerged. The very thought made Famke retire for a moment to bed. This is a cottager coming home to warm himself . . . This is a fish . . . This is a paintbrush grinding a pearl.
When Albert came home, he did the finer work, adding nuance to the ice, a bubble or a flower here, a crack or a worm there, more of the reddish glow that signified not only Nimue’s magic but her virginal anger as well. Soon the canvas was finished.
Albert bought wide strips of gilded walnut for a frame, then proceeded to bury the gilding under a thick layer of more painted flowers and butterflies. He could hardly wait till the paint was dry before he fit the frame around the canvas—up into the very peak of the roof—and laid a thick coat of varnish over the whole.
“While Nimue dries,” he proposed, “I should do some smaller pictures. Maybe the Amazon Queen Calafia. Or perhaps Flora, goddess of springtime, as we still have those silk flowers; or Salome, if we can borrow Mrs. Strand’s brass platter. What do you think, darling—are you prepared to surrender the brush and pose for me again?”
Famke dared a sly suggestion: “Perhaps,” she said, “you could paint John Ruskin on his wedding night, seeing the whole truth of a woman.”
Albert smiled at that but said, “We have no one to pose for the male figure. No, I think we shall try Salome.”
So she stood before Albert again, draped in filmy veils torn from Nimue’s nightdress, with the brass platter reflecting back her own face instead of John the Baptist’s. She smiled and smiled, gazing at that honeyed image.
Kapitel 6
If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
WILLIAM MORRIS,
THE BEAUTY OF LIFE
Finally, the great day came: Nimue was ready to descend to earth. It was the middle of March, the ice in the harbors had all but vanished, and Albert’s father expected him in England. The paint and the sealing layer of varnish had dried to his satisfaction, so there was no reason to delay. Thus, despite what he’d come to think of as an artistic idyll with Famke, he had bought a ticket that would bring him home on time.
“I did not know it would be so soon,” Famke repeated, day after day, until Albert asked her to stop.
Her lover had larger concerns. Exactly how was it possible to remove a six-by-eight-foot assemblage from an attic with a winding stair? He refused to break down the frame and roll up the canvas; that might crack Nimue’s paint and would surely ruin the harmonious whole. He finally decided to remove the glass from two windows, cut away the wood between them, and lower the painting in the manner of a piano. He engaged the finest box-maker in Copenhagen to prepare a crate and deliver it below on the day of departure. Meanwhile, Famke, bereft and occasionally indulging in a sob, sewed a wrapping of fine linen over the whole piece.
On the day itself, Albert hired a team of the soberest sailors he could find to handle both the demolition and the lowering. He stood down in the street with an umbrella to ward off the splinters of glass and wood, and he shouted instructions, which Famke translated into Danish as an amused crowd started to assemble. Several of the neighbors were already drunk and ready to laugh at ten in the morning. The landlady, Fru Strand, was drunk, too, and in a stupor; so it wasn’t until all the windows were broken and the wood supports gaping like a toothless mouth that she came boiling into the street to give Albert a what-for. As she raged, he nodded politely, most of his mind on the work above: The sailors had roped up his linened Nimue and were pushing her over the jagged edge. Albert still didn’t speak a word of Danish.
“Lay some blankets on the sills!” he screeched, and Famke had to translate. For good measure, she also offered Albert’s apologies to Fru Strand, but the woman’s protests didn’t halt until Albert shoved enough Kroner at her to buy new glass for every window in the building, and for a good long soak in her favorite beer-hall. At that, she stood back and watched with the rest of the crowd as the well-cushioned canvas slid stiffly toward them, then lurched over the edge and caught with a jolt on the ropes. The linen covering billowed like a sail. Famke’s stitches were loose, and they had torn on the broken glass; so as the picture descended the linen peeled away, until around the building’s second floor it blew off entirely and Famke was exposed in her near-naked, seven-foot-tall glory.
The sailors whistled and threw their elfin hoods in the air. The prostitutes stamped. A passing housewife looked scandalized, despite Famke’s cobweb of ice Down There.
Famke knew she should blush, but she was much too pleased with the effect—she’d never seen the picture from far enough away to appreciate it fully, and she realized again in this moment that it was splendid, very like her and yet far more beautiful than she could ever be. She whirled and flung her arms around Albert, her lips on his lips.
It was the last kiss they would exchange. Albert put her firmly from him and shouted more instructions to the sailors, and Famke had to translate again. “To the right!” he called; and “Til højre!” she echoed.
“Careful!”
“Pas på!”
“She’s not some clunking sea chest!”
Famke thought for a moment and told the sailors, “Elsk hende som en Kvinde . . . ” Love her like a woman.
Albert’s ship was sailing from the old harbor in less than an hour. He pulled out his watch and glared at it with bulging eyes, a gesture that worked in any language. Famke shivered as the wind grew colder.
“I’ll have to have the linen resewn on board,” he muttered, tossing the loops and strips up over the frame as it slid into its slender crate.
Up until the last moment, Famke hoped Albert would ask her to come with him. But even in their happiest time together, he had said nothing about doing so; and why should he? She was just a model, and he had important things to accomplish in London; things that required not a model but a sharp, clear head for business. She would only be a burden.
Famke had reasoned all of this out in the last days, but even as she accepted a generous purse as a parting gift, and even as she watched the nails driven into the picture’s box, watched Albert climb with his bag onto the hearse that was the only carriage big enough to transport Nimue, and watched him drive off with a casual wave of his hat—well, she kept hoping.
“Tell me how it goes with the Academy exhibition!” she called after him, and she thought she heard him shout back in assent.
It took a long time for Albert to disappear. The