The Lover From An Icy Sea Read online

  In the years in between, there’d been many women and many smells, all of which had simply become a blur. It was the smell of her neck alone that remained in perfect isolation in his olfactory memory. And that smell was one which, once logged, he’d kept ever since as the smell of ‘minx.’

  The smell, taste and feel of the nape of Daneka’s neck struck him as somehow similar—though all of it a brushstroke older. It hadn’t occurred to him until now, but then he’d never made the connection. Perhaps her smell was why he’d initially been attracted to her. Funny, he thought, that a photographer should be drawn to a woman by the olfactory and tactile rather than the visual.

  “Ready for your coffee?” she asked.

  “Yes, thank you.” She poured it out into a cup and gave it to him, then grabbed a small pitcher of heavy cream from the refrigerator and brought it over to the kitchen table. “You’ve already been out grocery shopping, I see.”

  “Yes, just a starter kit, really. We’ll shop in Rønne for some real stuff.” She held the pitcher up and began to pour. “Tell me when.”

  He waited a couple of seconds. “When.” She returned the pitcher to the refrigerator. “Do you mind if I take a quick shower before we go to visit with your mother?”

  “Not at all, darling. Take your time. She’s not going anywhere.”

  “Care to join me?” he asked, trying to make the question sound, if not exactly scintillating, at least not as perfunctory as he knew it was—to both of them.

  “Oh, thanks for the invitation,” she said. Her lips tried to simulate a smile, but fell flat in the attempt. “I’ve already had mine. I’ll just clean up in here a little while you finish your coffee and then take your shower.”

  Kit watched her as he continued sipping. He’d never actually seen her engaged in this kind of activity before. Estrella—her housekeeper—probably did most if not all of the cleaning for her in New York.

  She was, he thought, as exceedingly thorough in this as in everything else. He wondered at what point ‘exceedingly’ would become ‘excessively’ or ‘obsessively’ as he watched her go over some of the same spots three and four times. But he kept the thought to himself as he hurried to finish his coffee and rid himself of the sight of this unnatural spectacle. He finally stood up, poured the last of his coffee down the drain, placed the cup in the sink, and was about to go upstairs when she stopped him.

  “Darling,” she said in a tone that signaled to him immediately that she had some corrective measure in mind. “We do it this way here. First, we rinse out our cup, like this”—she turned on the cold water and rinsed it out, then held it up for him to see—“and then we put our cup in the dishwasher, like this.” She opened it and pulled out the top tray. She then put the cup down in the rear corner of the tray, just so, and pushed the tray back in—also, just so. “And then we give the sink a last little scrub and rinse in case all of the coffee didn’t make it down the drain the first time around. Okay?”

  “Yes, Daneka. Okay.”

  “Would you like to try it yourself one time?”

  “No. I believe I’ve got the motions down now. Thanks.”

  “Good. Then there won’t be any misunderstandings about this in the future, I take it.”

  “None.”

  As he made his way up the stairs, Kit found himself wondering for the first time what it actually might mean to work for this woman. Not on a one-off project—even he could do that. But nine to five, Monday through Friday, with Christmas Day and two weeks off in August. He suspected the question of the “right” way or the “wrong” way to do a thing never really entered into the discussion; rather, that there was simply “Daneka’s” way. You either learned it—quickly and absolutely—and then discarded your own silly notions of what might work in a given situation, or you didn’t. If you didn’t, you found employment elsewhere—with no further need for instruction.

  As he showered, he forced himself not to think any more about it, but rather to let thoughts and dirt, dead skin cells and dislodged strands of hair, soap and shampoo run down the drain. After he’d rinsed himself off to his satisfaction, he rotated the shower knob a full three hundred and sixty degrees to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind.

  Chapter 56

  Thirty minutes later, Kit was showered, shaved, combed, brushed and dressed. As he descended the stairway, he noticed for the first time the framed portrait sitting on the mantle. Daneka was just at that moment walking out of the kitchen—hands wringing, dishtowel still clinging.

  “Is that, by chance, a picture of your mother?” Kit asked as he gestured towards the mantle. Daneka’s eyes followed Kits over to the same spot.

  “Yes. That’s mor.” He walked over, picked up the frame and studied the portrait. She was an attractive woman, he thought, and he could see the immediate resemblance: the same smile, the same short-cropped hair, the same well-defined lines in the jaw and nose. The portrait was a black and white, so revealed nothing about her eye or hair color. She wore a heavy-knit white sweater with some kind of traditional Scandinavian design just below the shoulder; underneath that, what looked to him like a gray, V-necked pullover or jersey; beneath that, a black undergarment of some kind. He looked at her portrait and could now easily envision Daneka in twenty years—they looked that much alike.

  “She’s a very becoming woman.”

  “She’ll be very pleased to hear you say that, darling.”

  “How good is her English?”

  “Oh, my. Rather good! Where do you think I learned my English? At finishing school?” she said this time with a wink.

  “C’mon. Let’s go. I’m dying to meet her.”

  They jumped into the car and started out across the island. Daneka seemed to Kit to be genuinely excited. She scooted up close to him and rode with one hand inside his shirt—something she hadn’t done since Portugal—occasionally pointing out some of the landmarks on their way around the island. Kit knew they must be getting close to the village when she pointed to a cemetery and mentioned that most of the members of her extended family were buried there.

  “Except for mor and me, of course.”

  “And is that where you, too, want to be buried one day?” Kit asked.

  “Yes. Right alongside mor.”

  “That’ll be nice. Finally, once again, between mother and father—where every child ultimately longs to be.” Daneka’s mood suddenly seemed to darken. The next words out of her mouth had clearly lost something of their previous sunshine tone.

  “No. Mor will lie in the middle. That’s where she belongs.” Kit didn’t press the point, as Daneka’s attention was suddenly drawn to a picturesque little building of faded yellow wood siding and dark green window and door frames. “And that,” she now pointed excitedly, “was my first schoolhouse!”

  This, Kit realized, was Rønne. It was every bit as delightful as Svaneke—though clearly more of a town than a village. They drove into the heart of it—past the wharf where their ferry had landed the day before, past various little shops—until she directed him to turn off the main road and down a little country lane, all cobblestone. Kit squeezed their car past a tractor or two. Farmers nodded; horses chewed. Kit spotted a couple of little girls in pinafores and long, golden braids who were playing—at least he imagined—the Danish equivalent of hopscotch. Daneka saw them at the same moment and rolled down her window.

  “Hallo! Er I dem, jeg tror I er? Er det virkelig lille Nina og lille Karen, som er blevet så store?”

  The girls sidled up to the car cautiously. Then, however, they recognized Daneka, and all prior wariness was given over to the wind.

  “Daneka!” they both shouted and reached in through the car window to stroke her face and hair. “Hvor er det længe siden! Er du kommet for at besøge fru Sørensen?”

  “Ja, jeg er. Ved I, om hun er hjemme?” Daneka asked.

  "Ja, selvfølgelig er hun hjemme. Hun er altid hjemme!"

  Kit had no idea what this exchange was all about.
But it never failed to impress him to hear little children speaking easily in a language he couldn’t understand—or, even more, one he himself might be struggling with.

  "Nå, lille Nina og lille Karen—øh, jeg mener STORE Nina og STORE Karen! Vi ses igen snart."

  Whether prompted by something Daneka had said to them, or merely curious—as their conversation with her seemed to be at an end—they both looked past her at Kit, then looked again at Daneka, then back at Kit, then at each other, then giggled and ran off arm in arm in sweet delectation of their secret.

  “The house is just up the way there, darling,” she said, pointing at a structure that looked to Kit as if it could’ve come straight out of an eighteenth-century painting. “You can park right in front.”

  When they pulled up, he saw that the house was indeed—if not as storybook in quite the same way as her own—a perfectly preserved relic of an era that could only have produced fairytales and other stories of wonderment. He looked at it and tried to imagine how such a home would’ve informed Daneka’s consciousness, how it would’ve enriched her imagination just as surely, and to the same—though inverse—degree that a tenement building in East New York or the South Bronx would surely have impoverished another child’s imagination. He looked at Daneka. She was indeed a remarkable character in all respects. But he now had his first real clue as to at least one source of that character, and of those to whom she was ultimately indebted for making it possible.

  They stepped out of the car and walked up to the front door. She could, Kit knew, simply have opened the door and walked in. She didn’t, however. She knocked.

  When the front door opened and a woman stepped into the light, Kit thought he could be looking at an older sister—the resemblance was uncanny. Any doubt was put to rest, however, as soon as Daneka spoke.

  “Goddag, mor.”

  “Hallo, Daneka.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Kit could sense that Daneka wanted an embrace, but that she couldn’t bring herself to initiate one. Her mother finally leaned into her; placed her hands on Daneka’s upper arms; gave her a peck on both cheeks. If Daneka expected or wanted a warmer homecoming from a woman she hadn’t seen in over a year, it would not be her mother’s to give—at least not today.

  “Mor, det er Kit, min—." She stumbled. Perhaps she’d never really considered, at least in Danish, what to call him. Her ‘boyfriend?’ Her ‘beau?’ He wasn’t her ‘betrothed.’ And yet, the other epithets seemed awkward, silly at her age. Or perhaps—she realized—she was simply too embarrassed in front of her mother to call him anything at all.

  Mrs. Sørensen came to Daneka’s rescue. “ … your Prince Charming. And if Kit doesn’t speak Danish, I don’t think we should, either.” She extended her hand and a smile. “How do you do. Welcome to Denmark and to Rønne.”

  Kit was bewitched—at least as bewitched as he could be by a woman twice his age. Whatever she had chosen to withhold from her daughter in their greeting of seconds earlier was clearly something she was prepared to give, and give unstintingly, to a perfect stranger. He took her hand in both of his—something he’d never done in his life. And then she spontaneously joined her other hand to her first. They were all hands and fingers—like a ball of happy little baby eels brought back from the brink of extinction.

  She next reached up and grabbed his chin; turned his face to one side to inspect his profile; turned it to the other to see the other half. She then turned to Daneka and allowed herself one last communication in Danish: “Han er jo en ren Adonis. Hvad vil han med dig?”

  Kit had no idea what she’d just said. He looked at Daneka for a clue and couldn’t believe his eyes. Her own welled up as if someone had just slapped her. Her lips quivered as she tried desperately to smile. “Desperately” was the only word that occurred to him at that instant.

  Mrs. Sørensen turned back to Kit. “Please come in.”

  Kit and Daneka both walked through the front door. The living room was beehive dark. The sun’s rays fought desperately with one other to climb in through windows the size of bookends. The panes had probably not been washed in years. The lucky ones that did manage to climb through were immediately sequestered in shadowy corners, crannies, nooks and—Kit now noticed—books. A library-full of them. Kit had never seen such a vast collection of books outside a public library. They lined shelves; were stacked on the floor and on tables; continued in stacks all the way up the staircase. He wondered whether there was any order to them and made a quick study of the shelves of one of the floor-to-ceiling cases. For the second time in the space of less than a minute, his credulity was challenged by what met his eyes.

  There were titles and names he recognized from philosophy, theology, history and mythology in this one case alone. Many of the titles contained the “ø” he’d only recently come to love as much as any man could love a letter of the alphabet—and so he guessed they were in Danish. But there were others—many others—and their myriad accents told Kit he was standing in a house whose mistress danced at all the balls of Europe, even if only in her bedroom slippers.

  He glanced at another bookcase. Once again, an assortment of accents stood atop proud letters of the names of the greatest writers of belles letters in the canon of Western literature. He even saw a few in Cyrillic, which piqued his polyglot pride.

  “Скажите, вы говорите по-русски?” he asked with lips that seemed poised to dance at one of her balls if only she’d extend an invitation.

  “Да, конечно! A вы, кажется, тоже?” she answered—her own lips like toes long stiff and frozen, but now not—now uncurling inside dance slippers at the first whisper of a waltz.

  “А Deneka? Она говорит?” he asked, but then suddenly realized he was allowing some mental shutter to open on the light of a small conspiracy with—of all people—Daneka’s mother.

  “Отвечу коротко: нет,” she answered—and they both shared a conspiratorial chuckle.

  Daneka was not amused. She of course wanted Kit and her mother to get along. But did they have to hit it off quite so famously and quite so quickly—and, apparently, at her expense? Her mother could speak Russian and flirt with any old sailor who wandered into port—but not with her partner!

  “Are you two quite finished?”

  “Indeed, we are, Daneka. Kit, why don’t you come into the kitchen with me and help put together a little tea party? I was thinking about something … wonderlandish. We could use a Mad Hatter, right Kit? So you, Daneka, are cordially invited.”

  Kit looked at Mrs. Sørensen, then at Daneka, then back at Mrs. Sørensen again. Daneka, he observed, was not looking at anyone or anything, but rather at her toes. Meanwhile, she kept her arms crossed tightly across her chest—a bulwark against any other battering rams her mother might now choose to attack with.

  “I’d love some tea,” he said simply as the two of them disappeared into the kitchen.

  * * *

  Daneka walked upstairs to her former bedroom and found it exactly as she’d remembered it. Her mother had changed none of it over the years—a fact for which Daneka was truly grateful. There was security in it: safety against all the possible monsters in the world save one. That one may indeed have struck; but only once—and would never strike again. That was one fairytale whose ending she was only too happy to have read, to have shut the book on for the last time, to have put on a high shelf—and then, to have relegated to ‘forever after.’

  She looked at her former collection of books, and her eyes scanned the names of the wordsmiths of her youth: H. C. Andersen—the complete works, of course—in Danish; Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Långstrump series in Swedish; the Brothers Grimm, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Adelbert von Chamisso in German; Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Mérimée, Saint-Exupéry, and Balzac’s entire Comédie humaine in French; Charles Dickens, Jack London and Mark Twain in English; Chekhov, Turgenev, Gogol—even Pushkin and Lehrmontov … but in Danish.
<
br />   Unlike her mother—Daneka knew—she herself would never again be asked to dance at a European ball. She’d outgrown the slippers of her youth and had, for better or for worse, chosen to make her home between the Hudson and the East. She’d chosen comfort—the thrum of air conditioners in summer and the bang of central heating in winter. As she sat down on the bed, it came upon her like a thunder-clap out of a perfectly blue sky: she couldn’t remember the title of a single book in her own library in New York.

  She sat, head in hands, for the next five minutes. Outside her bedroom window, the sun shone. Inside her head, however, dark clouds went on gathering.

  Chapter 57

  She heard Kit’s footsteps as he mounted the staircase. She stood up quickly and looked at her face in the mirror for smudges, telltale evidence of any of her private struggle, then dabbed her eyes just before he reached the door. As he entered, she gave him a smile that he immediately recognized as forced. But he appreciated that whatever she was struggling with, whether hers alone, or something with her mother—and so, with a much longer history—was something they could work on together. Later.

  “Tea time, Daneka,” Kit said as he put his arms around her. She allowed herself the luxury of his embrace for several seconds, but then gently pushed him away.

  “Shall we, darling?”

  They walked slowly back downstairs and through the living room, at the far end of which, and just out of sight of the front door, was a small dining area looking out into a greenhouse. As it was summertime, the door leading into the greenhouse was open, and its glass roof rolled back. Kit noticed that every available space had been devoted to assorted herbs and flowers, all of which had clearly benefited from the hand of a knowledgeable and loving gardener. He now wondered whether he might also have a willing partner for what he intended at Daneka’s place in Svaneke—or if not a partner, at least an advisor. He walked out into the greenhouse in order to absorb from close up the colors and fragrances of the flowers and herbs. Daneka, however, simply sat down.