The Lover From an Icy Sea (43 page)

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.”

Kit chuckled. “No. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen a soul. I’ve just been admiring your cottage.”

“
You like it then?” she asked, as if there’d ever been a question in anyone’s mind about its likeability. Still, Kit thought—and certain recollections, reflections and connections suddenly struck him almost dumb—she had to hear it. She had to have the obvious confirmed yet one more time.

“
Yes, Daneka. It’s nothing less than magnificent.”

She smiled like a satisfied child. Daneka, however, was an adult. Some irreparable damage—Kit now allowed himself to conjecture—must’ve been done long ago to her fundamental self-esteem. Someone or something had kicked out the bottom. He knew that his affirmation—that any single affirmation he or anyone else could offer would ultimately make no difference. The barrel was bottomless; the bottom itself, gone. She’d always be a seeker of compliments in one form or another, and none of them would ever be sufficient to restore that bottom.

“
It’s adorable,” he added. The reinforcement, he knew, was pointless; the first compliment had long since leaked out. There was already nothing left to reinforce.

“
Oh, it’s just a little getaway is all—a little pied-à-terre for me when Manhattan simply becomes too much. That, and a month in the summer—usually mid-July to mid-August, though we’re early this year thanks to you.” With this, she walked up to him, put her arms around his neck, stretched her head and mouth up to his ear.

“
How about a little fire, fireman? One in here and one downstairs—while I take a quick shower to wash off the salt. Whatever I miss, you can lick off.” She said the last barely above a whisper. Kit wondered whether the cottage walls had ears, or whether Danish bedrooms—like Danish trains and Danish train stations—were also quiet zones.

“
Deal.” He was happy. He hadn’t even needed to prompt her where a mid-summer fire was concerned. “And our stuff?”

“
Oh, let’s not worry about that for now. We’ll have more than enough time to unpack,” she said as she removed her arms from around his neck, walked over to a hamper in the corner of the room and began to undress, dropping one article of clothing after another into it. Kit watched her. She seemed, initially at least, to be unmindful of his watching—but only initially.

“
Darling, don’t you want to get to work on those fires?” she asked, suddenly covering as much of her body as she could with both hands. She can’t possibly be self-conscious about her nudity at this stage, Kit thought to himself. Maybe she’s just teasing.

As she’d watched him watching her, Daneka had had her own silent thoughts. The candlelight, she knew, showed her body and face to best effect. But there was also still too much direct sunlight coming in through the windows. It was more light than she wanted him to see her by in her present state: tired, stressed, premenstrual, post- much more coital than she’d known in a long time, and consequently fearing—if not yet actually feeling—a urinary tract infection coming on.

“
Be a darling now, darling. Run off and make us a fire or two. By the time you’re finished, I’ll be washed and ready for as much watching as your little eyes can stand. ‘Promise.”

For the first time in as long as they’d been together, Kit was surprised to discover that he had no difficulty disengaging his eyes from her almost naked body. A moment earlier, he’d been watching her intently. But this time, he knew the impetus was merely his professional curiosity. He’d felt no arousal, no excitement, no sensation of any kind. He’d simply been studying the way the light fell upon her body. What it showed him was probably more than either of them wanted him to see.

It fell, it seemed to him, like a brief sun-shower upon a stretch of arid, cracked land. This sun-shower, he realized, could not restore that land to its former fecundity. A torrential rain could not restore that land to fecundity—former or future. No amount of water could return that sere piece of land to what it might once have been before years of neglect or maybe the opposite of neglect—too much attention and too much of the wrong kind—had eaten and beaten much of the life out of it.

And yet, he thought, women who would not grow old gracefully were one of life’s more unpleasant facts: the vanity of the leisure class catered to by plastic surgeons who’d long since traded in their scruples for a summer bungalow in the Hamptons or a chacra at the Punta del Este while the children of Magaburaka and Sarajevo went limbless.

Almost as distasteful was the sight of those ageing bodies in clothes more appropriate to a teenager. In New York and Los Angeles, Rio and Buenos Aires, dowagers like bad wax figures on parade. Whenever they crossed his path, he’d actually look away in disgust.