The Lover From An Icy Sea Page 31
“We need to try to stay dry,” she said with a smirk. Her sudden awareness of a condition that had clearly not bothered her in the least since their ferry had left Copenhagen was one that Kit found amusing—and so characteristically Daneka.
She’d solved one problem, only to be confronted by another. The tarp had grommets, but no cord; hence, no way to secure it—another challenge in need of another solution.
“Hold these ends together, will you, darling?” Kit did as she asked, keeping both Daneka and himself thoroughly concealed from the neck down. He sensed Daneka stooping over slightly and reaching down for something, then finding it, then shifting her weight from one leg to the other. She rotated both of their bodies forty-five degrees so that Kit’s back, shoulders and head presented a screen between her and the windows on the navigating bridge. She then brought her hands up and out from under the tarp just under Kit’s. With one hand, she pinched two of the grommets together; with the other, she threaded the pair of holes with some material whose provenance was still a mystery to Kit. Only when she’d managed to get the material through the grommets and had begun to tie a knot in it did Kit understand her ingenuity: in lieu of cord, she was using her panties.
Is there no end to this woman’s inventiveness? he wondered. Why would I even bother to look at other women—for whatever reason? Not only has she thought through and overcome two foreseeable obstacles. She’s also anticipated a third in the form of a fine silk barrier—and promptly removed it.
Apparently satisfied with the security of her work, Daneka turned around to face Kit, then stepped back slowly until her back was up against the handrail. Unknown to him—but apparently not to her—there were two footrests hard-welded precisely where the starboard and port sections of the ferry met at the bow. She stepped up on them so that her face was on a level with his face, her feet perhaps three or four inches higher than his feet. He felt her hands underneath the tarp as they undid his belt buckle, pulled down his zipper, pushed his jeans down to his knees, then reached for the waistband of his shorts. She smiled at him a third time as she blindly, yet expertly, overcame the final obstacle—his shorts—and slid them down to join his jeans.
He felt those same hands as they hoisted up her skirt, then took him and guided him in. He slid into her easily as she placed her lips on his. Another pair of lips pulled him on, in, and up. Only once he was fully inside her did those lips cease pulling.
Kit could do virtually nothing from his standing position but stand. From her slightly raised position on the footrests, however, Daneka could bend—then re-extend—her legs several inches. The tent-like structure of the tarp gave them the necessary cover. To an outside observer, they appeared to be stationary. On the inside, however, Daneka would take complete possession of the mechanics facilitated by her four or five inches of flexibility. She became mistress of a vertical movement almost too sublime for two mere human bodies to withstand as she raised up, then settled back down again, and again, and again.
In the absence of a natural partner to inform her rhythm, she found the rhythm of the sea and of the ship’s blunt movements upon it. As the ferry would rise on a swell, she would slide down on Kit. As the ferry would slide back down on the other side of that same swell, she would rise. Occasionally, the ferry would slam; she would slam with it.
Whether it was ultimately the slide or the slam was no one’s fault, least of all the sea’s—to which swells came naturally and abundantly. On the last but one, Daneka’s body rose up and slipped accidentally off Kit. They fought frantically—if blindly—to find each other again. Just as she felt him start to enter her, the ferry slid down the backside of a swell and into a particularly deep trough. She mimicked the ship’s movement, raised her feet up off the footrests, encircled his chest with her arms and grabbed his hips with her thighs. His hands immediately slid down under her to lend support. Relieved of much of the burden of her own body weight, she had only that of her legs to worry about—and stomach muscles strong enough to keep them suspended almost indefinitely. She released his hips, spread her knees as wide as she could, pushed her abdomen up against his, and came. When she felt him come just seconds later deep up inside her, her vaginal muscles became a bellows, an accordion, clenching and unclenching, drawing in air, and him, and then expelling the air again, and seemingly drawing him deeper in with each contraction.
Daneka buried her face in Kit’s neck so as to muffle the sound. With no place to bury his face, Kit gritted his teeth.
When they’d both calmed down enough to see their situation and their surroundings with something like lucidity, it was not shame or embarrassment they felt, but only the tightness and rightness of their love. Their faces and lips awash in salt spray, their hair hanging in wet and scraggly strings, they kissed with a passion that would’ve done honor even to Balboa—and the captain’s salute in the form of a long blast from the ship’s horn did absolutely nothing to deter or dampen that passion.
These Danes, Daneka thought. They love to watch almost as much as they love to do.
* * *
Disassembling their litte tent proved to be no challenge for someone as talented as Daneka. She simply worked in reverse as if she’d memorized every manoever from the moment she’d first spied the tarp—and ran the film back to front. On the matter of the obstruction that had not long ago existed in Kit’s shorts, but which had conveniently disappeared, she improvised. What had formerly been hard, dry and stubborn was now soft, wet and malleable. She swiped her hand once across his lower abdomen like a squeegee, then made an “O” ring out of thumb and forefinger for the same purpose but on another part of him. She then brought her hand up through the opening in the tarp out of which their two heads were sticking, licked it, and suggested with a gesture that Kit do the same. He did.
She then put her lips on Kit’s again, forced them open with her own and tickled his tongue with hers in a long, liquid kiss. The captain acknowledged this second kiss with two short blasts from his horn. Without releasing Kit’s mouth from her own, she reached back down, then brought her entire arm out from under the tarp and gave the captain the ‘okay’ sign with thumb and forefinger.
She and she alone celebrated the knowledge that she’d just used the same thumb and forefinger as an “O” ring for a somewhat more sublime purpose.
* * *
The tarp returned to its original location; Kit and Daneka returned to their original state of dress, the continents not having shifted appreciably in the course of Kit’s and Daneka’s minor tectonic rumblings; and the captain, if amused, still holding to his original course—the island of Bornholm now came shortly into view. Small fishing boats flying miniature Danish flags bobbed here and there over the wake of the Villum Clausen as it progressed into port at Rønne. The captain once again executed a one hundred and eighty-degree turnabout in bringing the ferry to its docking station, and a different—if equally masterful—set of deckhands delivered the ship to a secure berth.
Kit and Daneka walked back to the main cabin to retrieve their luggage, then disembarked with the remaining passengers. Rønne was a village: hence, the lone service station doubled as the lone car rental agency and was within walking distance of the docks.
Daneka took care of the paperwork while Kit got the car and loaded their luggage. Within minutes, they were off and driving down a two-lane country road up and around the perimeter of the island.
It was late afternoon by the time they reached Svaneke. Perhaps because the village was on the windword side of the island, any remnants of fog had long since blown off. The sky was a clear, if muted, blue. The colors of the other houses in Svaneke—half again the size of Rønne—were likewise muted: flax and goldenrod; ochre and jonquil. Kit didn’t wish to take this as an omen. It was what his growing knowledge of Daneka had prepared him to expect. To be muted was, quite simply, in the Danish conception of things—even in high summer.
Chapter 53
“I’ll get the bags. You go in and turn
on the lights.”
“Thank you, darling.
Kit took their luggage out of the car and put it on the ground. This, he decided, was a Camel moment. If you can’t love the Lucky you love, love the Camel you’re with, he thought to himself with a chuckle. He took one out, lit it, then sat down on what appeared to be a dry-stone wall to look for a long moment at Daneka’s cottage. “Storybook” was the word that came immediately to mind.
He hadn’t yet seen enough of the local architecture to know whether it was authentically Danish or something more eclectic. She might’ve bought it as a “fixer-upper”—or she might’ve had it designed according to whim, had it then built for her. In any case, he thought it more beautiful than any Mainline or Greenwich mansion, any Upper East Side townhouse or Brooklyn Heights brownstone, any Great Neck or Bedford Hills estate—than any Italian villa, even, in Porto Fino or along the Lido.
He would, in an instant, gladly give up every place he’d ever known for the chance to live here with her. Without her, he knew it would be nothing but an old piece of gingerbread. But with her? Like living in an adult candyland. They could, if she still wanted, make babies—little Danish roustabouts, roughnecks, maybe a poet, a dancer—or both. He didn’t care. If they raised a family of herring hucksters, hell—that’d be fine, too. Or if she didn’t want any children, he wouldn’t make it an issue. He’d continue as a photographer and she could do anything she wanted—or nothing at all. She’d already made more than enough money to retire on, and he could support himself. After all, a man of modest means didn’t require a great deal. But they’d be rich, wealthy beyond anyone’s wildest dreams—including their own—in having just each other, this house, and a bed. Not to mention the sea in front and the stars above.
Kit looked out at this quiet, silver sea—the ‘Baltic’ by name. It was not the Atlantic from Camden, Montauk or Rio; the Pacific from Mendocino or Viña del Mar; the Indian from Madras or Goa or even from Toamasina on the coast of Madagascar; not the Arctic from Fontur on the coast of Iceland, or from Myggebugten on the coast of Greenland. Nor was it the Caribbean from Cartegena; the Tasman from Auckland; the North from Aberdeen or, just across the way, the Norwegian from Bergen. Still less, the Caspian from Baku; the Black from Sevastopol; the Adriatic from Dubrovnik; the Mediterranean from Genoa, Ajaccio or Malaga; and certainly not the Aegean from almost any Greek island he could think of.
It was, quite simply, the Baltic. To the south of them lay Germany and Poland; to the east, Lithuania and Latvia; to the northeast, Estonia—beyond that, Finland; and directly above: big, burly Sweden. It was a lot of geography to try to comprehend at a glance; and right in the center of it all, solipsistically speaking, stood Daneka’s cottage.
The structure had an old English feel to it: a thatched roof, which looked to be authentic; few windows, and each pair deeply encased in a bulging sill and jamb that looked to have been fashioned out of pumice, limestone or some other crushed stone, then reinforced, perhaps, by metal lath. To all appearances, however, there was not a gypsum block, piece of particle- or plasterboard in sight. Flanking each pair of windows and hanging from wrought iron hinges, a pair of wooden shutters, the grain barely visible, but the struts running vertically—obviously heavy with age and warped. From a distance, the window panes themselves looked to be hand-blown and laid out within an intricate latticework of lead piping. The geometry of the glasswork looked almost fin de siècle—odd, Kit thought, in a structure clearly centuries older.
Just as he was admiring the latticework of one window in particular, he noticed a pair of hands behind, barely visible, the light on them refracted and heavily distorted by the thickness and internal bubbles of the ornamental glass. A tiny flame flickered slowly into view. The same picture came to him an instant later from the next window, and then the next. Daneka, obviously, was lighting candles—although the sun this close to the Arctic Circle wouldn’t be setting for hours yet.
The weathered wisteria-blue shutters set off perfectly against the faded sunflower-yellow of the cottage walls. Blue and yellow—the national colors of that behemoth directly to the north. Perhaps there is indeed something else she likes about Sweden, he thought. The irony didn’t altogether escape him.
He next looked at the landscape. Here, he reasoned, he might actually be able to make a contribution. He knew nothing about native flora or growing seasons, but there was always the Internet and the USDA to help him out if she had a computer and a connection. He’d simply have to confirm the zone. The island was at about fifty-five degrees north and on a latitudinal line running through the middle of the province of Labrador and just above the bottom lip of the Hudson Bay: he figured Zone Two. What he’d have to study up on, however, was the microclimate of a place like Bornholm. But they had time—a whole lifetime if she’d allow it; a good week if she wouldn’t. Either way, he concluded that further mental doodling on gardening, hardiness zones, microclimates and geography could wait. Daneka might consider sudden disappearances or even an extended absence her rightful prerogative; he knew better, however, than to assume that prerogative for himself.
He picked up their bags and walked to the front door—an impressive structure, probably of heavy oak or walnut and modeled on a typical Dutch door, with independent upper and lower halves. The mid-section of the entablature was of solid stone with a date chiseled in: 1636—one nice, round century older than his family’s house in Radnor. A “fixer-upper?” he chuckled to himself. This cottage had first been “fixed up” when Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Velázquez were still actively painting, Corneille writing, and Harvard College barely settled on its foundations.
The cornice, header and jambs were of some wood Kit didn’t recognize, heavier even than oak or walnut and of a grain almost as exquisite to his eye as a woman’s body. He couldn’t resist the temptation to touch it—and did so. The upper and lower panels, traditionally of wood in a front door, mimicked the glass and lead latticework of the windows, even if the color of the glasswork in this case was a diluted version of the shutters and walls of the cottage. A single blue, oval-shaped pane stood in the center of each panel, surrounded by a Jugendstil mosaic of the most subtle amber Kit had ever seen. The threshold and weatherboard, he finally noted as he prepared to open the door and step in, were solid, dove-gray flagstones.
He pushed down on the door latch. From its aged and pimpled feel, he concluded it might pre-date even the construction of the cottage. The hinges, bolts and lock were of identical wrought iron—hence, probably fired, forged and hammered by the same blacksmith, then polished to an artisan-acceptable finish by the same whitesmith.
As he entered, he immediately noted the wide wooden floorboards and heard Daneka’s footsteps overhead on what he supposed would be identical flooring. A candle in a tarnished brass holder burned in each window; three more burned in each of two lead sconces to either side of the fireplace. Footsteps around the perimeter of the room above him, punctuated by an occasional pause, suggested to his ear that she was on the way to completing her task on the second floor. The cottage, in short order, would resemble the houses he’d seen many times in Vermont—his only point of reference—throughout the long winter months. Perhaps, he thought, Vermonters had learned the custom from some of the state’s early Danish settlers.
He next noticed that the fireplace stood dark and empty. Would she allow the extravagance of a fire in mid-summer? He resolved to take their bags upstairs to ask and made his way to the stairway.
As if the front door, windows, walls and floors weren’t already sufficiently sublime, the staircase announced its magnificence in the only language old, dead wood could speak: imperial silence. The newel post, alone, was a work of exquisite beauty; Kit was certain he’d never seen another like it. Inlays within inlays—he counted six different kinds of wood at a glance, though couldn’t even have begun to identify them—absorbed or reflected light, each at its own particular frequency. The balusters were clearly hand-cut and of yet another kind of wood.
The handrail appeared to be of the same wood as one of the inlays in the newel post: dark, majestic, and badly in need of a dusting. Both stringers were clearly of common pine, but of a grain suggesting that the particular tree from which they’d been taken was nothing less than patrician. The same was true of the treads and risers.
The crown jewel of the stairway, however, was to be found in the risers themselves. Set into each was a triptych of eggshell-colored ceramic tiles. On each tile, painted in fine but sparse detail—and whether worn off by age or intentionally omitted by the artist, it was impossible for Kit to tell—country scenes and characters from what he could only imagine was the Denmark of a much earlier epoch. Some artisan—or artisans—had, he surmised, spent many long hours firing and glazing those tiles. Some artist—or artists—had then spent just as many long hours painting them. Some craftsman—or craftsmen—had finally spent as many long and careful hours again mounting them into the risers, which a carpenter—or carpenters—would then have put into place quite possibly while holding his—or their collective—breath.
He mounted the stairs with a care he normally took only for his camera, then went looking for Daneka in one of the rooms. He noticed, as he looked through two of the three doorways he came upon, that lighted candles already stood in the windows. It was only through the third doorway that he saw her—busy with lighting her last candle—and then walked in.
“Darling!” she said. Whether surprised or shocked or pleased, he wasn’t certain. The way she raised her hand to her breast, however, suggested he’d caught her in a deep reverie. “I’m so happy to see you. I thought maybe you’d run off with one of the villagers.”