The Lover From an Icy Sea (67 page)

This was such a moment for Kit, and he had no idea how much time and how many words—or who said them—had passed before he regained a sense of time and place, a memory of the preceding dialogue and a context for its continuation. When he did, gradually, it was only because the two contrasting bits of information he’d just been given were now, finally, beginning to make some kind of sense. The definitive news of Daneka’s suicide—from her mother’s own mouth—felt like the quick plunge of a dagger. The pain of it was only partially offset by his learning the solution to the puzzle over which he’d never really ceased to agonize.

*  *  *

Almost against his will, Kit leaned forward. “And Margarette’s—or rather Annmette’s father?”

“
As I said before, nature has an order and a logic all her own. In Daneka’s case, it was not her American boyfriend whose loving attentions ultimately found her willing egg, but her father’s—my husband’s.”

Mrs. Sørensen continued in something of a monotone. “The day after the incident, my husband hanged himself. Daneka became comatose. The boyfriend went back to New York and didn’t return the following summer—or ever again. When we discovered that Daneka was pregnant, I wanted her to abort the child. It would not have been difficult here in Denmark under the circumstances. But her pregnancy brought her back to herself, back to life. She believed that her baby was from her lover, not from her father, and so she wanted to keep it. She even named it—Margarette.”

“
But I thought her name was Annemette,” Kit said half in question.

“
It is. Margarette means ‘pearl’ in Danish. Daneka hit upon the name one day as she was rubbing her own belly—something she did constantly to polish the thing growing inside her,” Mrs. Sørensen said with a sad smile. “When she delivered a baby girl and immediately understood who that baby’s true father was, she chose the name Annemette instead. Annemette in Danish means ‘bad pearl.’” And now, for the first time, Kit could discern a touch of bitterness around the edges of Mrs. Sørensen’s mouth. “You see, Daneka was smart. She was ambitious. She was precocious. But she could also be … Well, Kit, I’ll let you provide your own word.”

Kit looked down between his knees and stared hard at the floor. He had no words to respond adequately to any of what Mrs. Sørensen’s had just told him.

“
I think you can probably provide the rest of the answers as well as—or maybe even better than—I can. How and why she moved to New York. How and why she was able to thrive in New York as she never could have thriven here. Denmark is full of pain and grief, certainly—just like any other place. But because we are so small, because there are so few of us, all of it is necessarily lived on the outside. Unlike in big, loud, boisterous New York, there is simply no good way to hide it here. In New York, I would imagine that people suffer many of the same private agonies. Human beings are not all that different the world over. It is what they choose to do with those agonies—whether they allow themselves to be overcome by them, or achieve in spite of them, or maybe even because of them—that matters.

“
I think Daneka chose to live in New York because only there—and not here—was it possible to keep her secrets hidden away in dark places. Until, of course, she just could not any longer—until the power and grief of that secret simply overwhelmed her. At which point she had to come back, even if only in a box. She had to come here to find a final, peaceful resting place.

“
You, Kit, were at first something of a mystery to me. You were also a great hope. I had always hoped that someone would break through to Daneka. That someone kind, patient and gentle enough would allow her to reveal her secrets—at least to herself—so that she would finally be able to grieve, and accept, and love—that other person, certainly, but first of all herself.”

*  *  *

More than at any time in the months in which he’d seen his relationship with Daneka growing colder by the day, more than at any time in the ten years since he’d last walked out of her bedroom and closed the door to her apartment—knowing that he’d never open it again—Kit now felt her absence. It came to him not as a twinge or as a pinch, but as a howling out of some deep pit. He realized for the first time that she perhaps really had loved him—that she’d simply been incapable of showing that love for the reasons her mother had now finally made clear to him—and perhaps for many others, too, many of which might find their source and explanation with this very same mother.

As tears welled up in his eyes, they were not tears for himself or for his loss. They were tears for Daneka, who’d too rarely allowed herself to cry. But they were also tears for this woman who, in the end, had found mosses and lichens of her own—and who’d apparently discovered the beauty of them; for this woman who’d found that a certain kiss on the nape of a certain neck—namely her own—had meant more to one man than all the world’s riches or all the world’s sins; for this woman who’d realized that the dream that could’ve been would never be; instead, that the nightmare which had consumed her in life would continue to haunt her in death—unless and until she put an end to it by coming home to bury it at its source.

He thought of the passage in Milan Kundera’s book he’d only recently read, and yet which had locked itself into his short-term memory: “
For the woman who is dead is a woman with no defenses; she has no more power, she has no more influence; people no longer respect either her wishes or her tastes; the dead woman cannot will anything, cannot aspire to any respect or refute any slander
…”.

Kit rose up out of his chair, put on his winter coat and gloves, pulled his scarf tight about his neck and walked out the front door. It was now indeed cold outside, and he braced himself against the wind blowing in from the sea. He walked back to the cemetery and to Daneka’s gravestone, gazed upon the head and neck of the Virgin even as they seemed almost to transform themselves into Daneka’s own head and neck.

As he approached her stone bust from the rear, he noticed a pair of moths in the folds of her headdress and raised his hand to brush them away. In that single gesture, at the sight of that single pair of moths, a view—and then a smell—came to him from somewhere deep in his memory. In that same instant, he knew—finally and conclusively—that she’d also been his elusive first one.

As he bent down and put his lips to the back of her stone-cold neck for one last kiss, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to feel the heat of the brand she’d once left in a park called Riverside, in a city called New York, in a pain called eternity. The brand might’ve lost its burn but not its scar, he now realized as he whispered “
adjö
” in the only Scandinavian language in which he’d ever learned the word for “goodbye.”

Coda

Late winter, 1992

As he started out from Philosophy Hall towards the subway entrance at 116th and Broadway, he was tired—of arguing, certainly, but also of the rules of argumentation. He heaved heavy eyes towards a logic-free heaven, then let them drift back down to earth where he found nothing of Quine’s quiddities to help him, but instead spied her as she slipped out of Lewisohn. He carried a well-thumbed Schopenhauer. She, he saw, carried only herself and a sheaf of papers, though both exceedingly well.

He continued walking towards the subway—watching, then sensing, that her footsteps might now be nudging the continents towards some sublime, quixotic shift. As they emerged from under the arches, he saw a limo standing in a
No Standing
zone. Her driver also stood—beside an open back door. She ducked down to enter and caught her mink on the handle. A few papers went flying. He picked one up; recognized the comely shape of verse; read the header and the first two lines:

“
They Know I Did It”

In turns, we’re heir to nightmares –

and so, debauched of dreams;

He paused as he considered what he might’ve just stumbled upon: another Sappho-in-the-making; a masked poetess.

Masked, in-the-making, and in mink—hence, a minx he thought as he gave the piece back with a single word of acknowledgement—“Provocative”—and accidentally touched her glove in the hand-off. She thanked him soundlessly with only a flicker of her lips, though eyes—and not just a little—aided and abetted.

The quad lay behind him; the MTA in front. A turnstile to any torch show in Manhattan or its four outlying boroughs was his for the pushing. Until, that is, he caught the scent of something like perfume; heard a sound on concrete no sneaker could make; glanced back and understood, in a second, how easily even heathens could hallelujah when an angel alighted on a pair of heels piled four inches high.

He pretended to fumble with his transit card. Fumbling at his age was first blush, second nature. Pretending? He still lacked the catechism for it. She, meanwhile, stood at the kiosk attempting to purchase a subway token. An opportunity, he thought—as purchasing subway tokens was clearly no part of her paradigm. And then it suddenly fell upon him like spring rain: perhaps she was no better at pretending than he was. One thing was crystal clear, however: fumbling was not her forte.

“
Fuck it!” he pretended to say as he turned away from the turnstile and started out towards the exit stairway on the opposite side of Broadway.

“
Fandens også!
” was the bouillabaisse of sounds he heard her whisper as he saw a hand slip back through mink and drop the two bills—though he would’ve known nothing of the syllables, much less of the sexy little accent. Lights on this scene in any case went to dark as he hit the exit.

When he came back up and turned the corner, it was to a set of sun’s rays retiring over Riverside. She came up after him. At street-level, she claimed her turf with a single stiletto heel while perusing the panorama—real lighthouse-like. Sending a beacon out in search of lost sailors, however, was not her shtick: she was more accustomed to being the Siren—or maybe even the shoal—on which they crashed. The clean-up? Somebody else’s problem.

She finally saw him walking much too cavalierly down 116th in the direction of the park. She studied his walk—then mimicked it—staying a frivolous fifty paces behind. He leaned up against the wall of a building, attempted to light a cigarette. She leaned up against her own piece of wall, took out her own cigarette. As he flicked at something frantically, she slipped out a Dunhill 18-carat gold-enameled; pressed down gently on the lever; let the electrons do the heavy lifting.

She inhaled, let the smoke flow back out. Charming as church bells chiming ‘Glory Borealis’ he thought as he caught her exhalation out of the corner of his eye. He, she noticed, was still flicking—and so she advanced upon him and extended the Dunhill. He looked briefly into a pair of cool emerald greens, then back at the lighter; cupped his hands ‘round while letting one thumb rest an instant upon her glove; took the fire and inhaled.

“
Thanks,” he said.

“
Pas de quoi
,” she answered.

He stumbled—but only for an instant. “
Vous êtes
—?”

“
Just teasing,” she sniffed.

She put the cigarette between her lips and inhaled, let the smoke stream back out through flaring nostrils.
Gentle as a riptide
, he thought, his brain now just a commotion of molecules.
Beautiful and Baudelairian
—he barely managed, now a bashful mass of feet and no mouth.

She, in the meantime, grew bored—and glanced down at his tome:
The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
. Perhaps—she thought—I could throw him a starter kit.

“
How many squares would a square root wreck if a square root wrecked for a reason?”

He looked up at her.
Not only beautiful
, he thought,
but
—.

They both exhaled simultaneously.
Perfect timing
, she thought. 
Much better than sufficient reason
.

*  *  *

For the next minute, they exchanged only smoke and stares. He then dropped his cigarette and stamped it out. She dropped hers, kicked it in his direction. He looked down; got a fix on its location; looked back up as he squashed it. Lids dropped like final curtains on a pair of prominent cheekbones, Danish-cut. The time for dallying, he thought, is done.

“
Wanna chuck wood?” he asked.

“
Sure,” she said. “Let’s chuck.”

He grabbed her hand and moved. The sun, now a mere palimpsest over the Palisades, drew them in the direction of Jersey, just across the Hudson—about a million miles away.

*  *  *

At Riverside, he sought a shady spot.
Moonbeams can be murder on a mink
, he thought. He found a maple, looked for moths—spotted a pair and motioned for them to scram—then probed for rough spots before leaning her back against it.  The curtsy of her coat against the maple suggested there was no rough. Her own sigh confirmed it.