The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf Read online

  Was she tempted by this offer? Did it occur to her for a minute that she might want to spend the rest of her life with a man, even such a wild and handsome creature? Or had Dancer known all along that Helle would never capitulate? But he wouldn’t forsake her, would he? Helle asked, to which Dancer replied, Never. Never! As long as he was alive, Dancer promised, he’d be there to protect her. To protect her and to cut her hair—which was getting a little long, in case she hadn’t noticed. Aimlessly, dreamily, they started walking, holding hands like lovers, something they could now afford to do since there was no longer any doubt about what the act of holding hands might mean. Aimlessly, dreamily, they walked, away from the moonlit ocean, away from the sorrowful mermaid and the monumental goddess, past the sad Russian refugees and the darkened windows of the customhouse, in one end of the Amalienborg Palace’s central courtyard, around its moonlit dead horseman and out the other end, back toward the Bredgade and the three onion-shaped domes of the Alexander Nevsky Church—their gold plate brighter than the moon itself!—and the wall of lindens surrounding Kongens Nytorv, toward the empty, silent opera house, and then left onto the Nyhavn.

  The parlor was moonlit and sad, empty and silent; everyone else was asleep, just as they’d been the first time Dancer and Helle sat side by side on Daisy’s favorite green sofa. Clip clip clip went the stork’s beak, and small black crescents of hair drifted to the floor. She would be lying, Helle admitted, if she were to say that she didn’t like the feeling of Dancer’s fingers moving along her scalp, or if she were to pretend that her pleasure wasn’t a result of having renounced all claim to such pleasure in the first place. Helle must have realized, Dancer said, that sooner or later Henning was going to have to die—clip clip clip—and that Helle was going to have to kill him. Sooner or later, he said. When he was done, he gathered the clippings together, put them into an envelope, and handed it to her, explaining that she should hide it somewhere. As long as she was alive, Dancer said, her hair could be used against her. Only after a person was dead was it safe for her hair to be made, for instance, into a ring, as they had with Kayo’s. Nothing can touch you then, he said. Then you’re in the realm of Helle, daughter of Loki and the giantess Angerboda. And was it true that half of Helle’s body was bright red, and the other half the palest white? That her doorstep was called Pitfall; her knife, Famine; her plate, Starvation; her bedcurtains, Mischance? In any event, Dancer said, that was what he’d learned in school. Of course he was talking about hell.

  Meanwhile, Inger proved to be a prolific correspondent. She’d always claimed that she hated to write, but every week the postman brought Helle another long, dull letter in which Inger detailed her new life as a married woman. The advantages, she wrote, outweighed the disadvantages. It was nice to have a home of her own, even though it sometimes seemed unnervingly quiet. She and Hans had one milk cow and were talking about getting another. A man in England who was planning an expedition to the Antarctic had contacted them about buying a large quantity of down; even if the business wasn’t flourishing, at least it provided them with a living. No babies yet, but she was hopeful. She was sorry to hear about Helle’s friend. They could all give thanks that the war was over, although Anders insisted that peace was an illusion. The older he got, the stranger and more difficult he became. It was bad enough when he would eat only potatoes. Then he started to eat wool and poor Gunhild had to hide her knitting. Maybe, one of these days, Helle would swallow her pride and come home for a visit? If she felt uncomfortable about staying at Krageslund, Inger and Hans had a dear little guest room, with blue flowered wallpaper and a flowered rug she’d hooked herself. “A married woman, Henning!” Daisy would say, every time another letter arrived. “I’d never have suspected that you’d turn out to be a homewrecker.”

  For four years Daisy had played along with Helle’s deception. Then, the day before Helle’s graduation from the conservatory, when she was trying on the pair of custom-made, spruce-green, knee-high leather boots Daisy had given her in honor of the occasion, she found a small tissue-wrapped package containing a pair of French silk stockings in the right boot’s toe. Well, Dancer said, he guessed the secret was out that Helle had great legs. His gift was a new black sailor’s cap, to replace the old one, and within the crown he’d packed a set of ivory hair ornaments from the Sudan; no secret, he said, that she had great hair too. Only Oluf Froulund’s gift was straightforward, a tooled tobacco pouch filled with tobacco, indicating he at least hadn’t seen through her disguise.

  Helle’s final project, what she referred to as the world’s most dim-witted fugue, was performed at the graduation ceremony by a graduating group of chamber musicians, the Norwegian cellist among them; moreover, Helle won two prizes and Bingger took her aside at the formal reception to tell her that her future was assured so long as she remembered the words of the master—Fux, of course: “Do not allow yourself to be seduced into proceeding too early to your own free compositions. The mountain of the muses is to be reached only by a very precipitous path.” But Mozart composed Bastien und Bastienne when he was twelve, Helle replied. Ah, Bingger replied, Mozart. Little Wolfgang. If Bingger recalled correctly, though the opera premiered, appropriately enough, in the Vienna garden of a certain Dr. Anton Mesmer, not everyone in the audience was hypnotized.

  And certainly Lahloo, Helle admitted, wasn’t without its flaws. The ending, for example. She never was good at endings, unless, as with Waves, she had another person’s text to guide her. Indeed, she sometimes thought the first production of Lahloo got mounted only because Rasmus Rundgren, the quixotic director of the Copenhagen Royal Opera, was bored. He wanted a challenge, a project that would call attention to his own genius and not merely serve as a showcase for some overweight and avaricious diva. The postwar world in which Rundgren strove to make his mark was characterized by widespread disregard for the workings of larger forces: having recently been swallowed up in history’s maw, the postwar world, spit out at least momentarily into the sunshine, was busy licking dry its various parts. The prevailing mood was one of exhaustion. Tired of pulling together for a common cause, people wanted to bury their dead and get on with their lives; like Candide, they wanted to cultivate their own gardens, to grow something more interesting than the beets and turnips which they’d become heartily sick of during the war.

  Of course Rundgren had been notorious for his innovative stagings of traditional operas even before the war was over. His contemporary setting for Dido and Aeneas was accepted by the audience without complaint. Who cared about Purcell, anyway? But when he turned Der Rosenkavalier, a popular favorite, into a political fable, the audiences and the critics revolted. To equate Baron Ochs with the Kaiser was objectionable: there was nothing comical about the Kaiser. To replace the Baron’s missing wig with the Kaiser’s famous pointed helmet was bad enough, but to depict Mohammed—the little turbaned Negro boy who, at the opera’s close, lifts aloft Sophie’s handkerchief—as a winking Nazi was nothing short of a travesty. So what if Rundgren’s vision proved politically astute? You went to the opera to escape history, not to be reminded of its inevitability.

  Thus it was Helle’s good luck that by the time Lahloo was completed, Rasmus Rundgren was eager to produce something for which nostalgia could not be used as a critical standard. It was also her good luck that Daisy had finally decided to marry the persistent cement magnate. Thorkild Propp came from Mariager, a storybook town in central Jutland, on the outskirts of which the enormous chimneys of the Propp Cement Works filled the sky, day and night, with blue-black clouds. A large and cheerful man whom Daisy called Thor, he was given to wearing clothes at least one size too small, under the mistaken notion that packing his hamlike thighs into tight gabardine pants somehow made him look trimmer, more dashing. Although she would never love anyone the way she’d loved that handsome sailor boy so many years ago, Daisy explained that Thor knew how to make her laugh and, obviously, was very rich. The war had spread economic hardship throughout Europe, but it had
also created the need to rebuild. Pigs and cement, Daisy said. Denmark was still exporting upwards of a hundred thousand pigs to England every week. And people everywhere clamored for boatloads of Propp Cement.

  Mange tak! Oluf Froulund said, clasping his arthritic, translucent fingers together over his weak chest. Thank you very much. He was furious, because Daisy had just finished telling her boarders that after the wedding—two Thursdays hence, Thursday being Thor’s day, and a small, private affair, since anything more lavish, given the advanced age of the couple, would be in poor taste—they would have to find new lodgings. She’d be moving to Thor’s estate in Mariager, and once she was settled in she hoped they’d all come to visit. The estate overlooked the Mariager fjord, she said, and was unusual for being composed, largely, of cement. “Of course it’s a terrible eyesore,” Daisy added. “But very big.”

  Helle’s response to this news was not as desperate as Oluf Froulund’s, although she confessed to sharing his sense of betrayal. Besides, wasn’t everyone leaving? Dancer had just signed on for three years as chief officer of a passenger ship, figuring that he might as well capitalize on his looks before he lost them. As it turned out, Helle never saw him again. One morning he was drinking a cup of coffee at Daisy’s table, and the next he was hugging her goodbye in his new uniform. As usual his wide-set eyes took in everything but her face, just as the ruminant appears to be watching everything but the precise blade of grass it’s about to nip off at the roots. The minute the door closed behind him, Daisy poured what was left of his coffee into the sink. She hated change as much as Oluf, Helle said, the difference being that Daisy had learned how to camouflage or eradicate its traces. For this reason the visage she presented to Thorkild Propp, when he arrived in her parlor several hours later bearing tulips and liqueur-filled chocolates, was as fresh and unlined as a girl’s.

  “Henning,” Daisy said, “come join us. Have a chocolate.” Raising her pale eyebrows ironically, she held out a box that Helle recognized as yet another of Propp’s creations, a wobbly wooden object decorated with muddy oil paintings of his namesake’s attributes: Mjolnir, the hammer; the iron mitt and magical belt; yellow Z’s meant to represent lightning bolts; a cart drawn by two oddly foreshortened quadrupeds who were, as he explained, billy goats. For Thorkild Propp was one of those self-made men of business whose aspiration is to make a larger impression on the world than is created by dumping onto it tons of cement; he was an autodidact, a dabbler in the arts.

  Always an honor, Propp said, taking Helle’s bony hand in his fat ones. What he wouldn’t give to be able to write music! No doubt Henning was acquainted with the work of Carl Nielsen? So beautiful! So soul-stirring! The Danish Sibelius, as they called him. But why not call Sibelius the Finnish Nielsen? Although the problem wasn’t really the Finns, was it? The real problem was the Germans and Italians, didn’t Henning agree? Wasn’t your average Dane, after all, every bit as sensitive, as musical as your average Kraut? Hamlet was a Dane, was he not? Ha! And did Henning perhaps have a project of his own which might redound favorably upon Denmark’s reputation?

  The tenor of these remarks was intended to be ingenuous, although Helle could see a glimmer of cunning in the twin gooseberries of Hr. Propp’s eyes. He seemed to be taking her measure, just as any successful businessman does prior to striking a deal, for which reason she chose to keep her opinions to herself. When you want something from someone, it’s important to trim and shape the truth in order to present the illusion of fair exchange. Yes, Helle said, she’d completed an opera, but she assumed it would never be produced because of the Danish preference for the works of Strauss or Wagner or Puccini. When Hr. Propp urged her to play him a sample tune, she complied with “Dancing Sister.” Lovely, lovely, he pronounced after she’d finished; he sat with his one arm slung in a proprietary fashion around Daisy’s shoulders, acknowledging his enthusiasm by beating with his free hand on the broad expanse of his thigh. Was the rest as good? he wanted to know. Helle chose humility, the safest avenue of response under the circumstances. She could only hope so, she said, at which Propp let out another loud “Ha!” and drew a card from his vest pocket. Henning was to present himself at the inscribed address at noon the next day. The wealth of the Medicis had been based, perhaps, on a nobler commodity than cement; but patronage was patronage, was it not?

  The address in question turned out to be that of the Royal Theater. As Helle approached it from across Kongens Nytorv, she could see, partially obscured by the statue of Ludvig Holberg, a large signboard announcing the current season’s offerings: The Wild Duck, Coppélia, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, La Bohème. It was October of 1923. The sun was shining brightly, the sky was blue; leaves were falling from the lindens around the square, revealing the knobby, fistlike shapes of the upper branches. When you trim the top of a tree straight across, Helle thought, you substitute aggression for grace. She’d heard the rumors about Rasmus Rundgren—his bad temper, his debauched weekends in Malmö, his fascination with disease—and wondered if this could be the aggressive result of a similar dedication to artifice.

  Initially, all she could see of the man was his bullet-shaped head, thinly smeared with hair as a rock is crusted with lichen. He was sitting in the middle of the front row of the balcony, gazing toward the stage with a bored impartiality not unlike that of the gilt angel who roosted, a crystal lamp depending from her gilt fingers, immediately beneath him. In rehearsal for Coppélia, the female lead was practicing her opening solo. “Delibes,” said Rasmus Rundgren. He never stopped watching the stage, gesturing impatiently for Helle to sit down beside him. “Ballet.” A pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, their lenses dirty and flecked with dandruff, moderated the effect of his small, quick eyes. “A second-rate art form.” Without language, he explained, art was basically amoral. The evidence was right in front of them. When, toward the end of Act Two, Coppélius decides to steal Franz’s brain in order to plant it in his doll’s brainless head, it isn’t so that she’ll be able to articulate the difference between right and wrong but so she’ll know enough not to dance into a wall or out the window. A second-rate art form, Rundgren repeated, its crimes aggravated by the abysmal quality of the music.

  Then, suddenly, he stood up. Propp was late, but any man who could make money selling bags of dust was bound to be resourceful; if Propp wanted to find them, he would. In the meantime they would adjourn to Rundgren’s private office. Rising to follow him, Helle was startled to discover that he was at least an inch shorter than she was. He told her not to get her hopes up, his tone conversational and pleasant. Propp had said that the work was “very pretty,” and if Rundgren wanted pretty, he could stick with Puccini. But Propp only heard one song, Helle replied. By now Rundgren was ushering her down a hallway in which, among packing cases and framed set-pieces, the glittering pendants of Hakon Werle’s chandelier spilled across Mimi’s gray mattress, the clasp of the Burgermeister’s purse peeked out of Gina Ekdal’s straw basket, Musetta’s new shoes stood side by side on top of Pierrot’s drum. This dark hallway, filled with the disjunct elements of many worlds, mirrored perfectly Helle’s frame of mind. There is nothing worse than having to try to please two people at the same time when each one of them has an opposing idea of what they want from you. This, she knew, was her only chance to win Rundgren’s support; once Propp arrived, she would become as odd as those red leather shoes or that purse, as helpless as anything lacking context. The work as a whole was unconventional, she explained. The tune she played for Propp was merely intended to provide ironic contrast. Oh, unconventional, Rundgren said—God help us.

  As he paged through Helle’s score, occasionally humming to himself, tapping his surprisingly long, beautifully manicured fingers on the arm of his chair, she surveyed the photographs of the famous, each one framed and personally inscribed, which covered the walls of his small, untidy office. Most of them, she couldn’t help noticing, were from women: Amelita Galli-Curci (“L’uomo è mobile”); Adelina Patti (“Al mio tesoro,
carissimo Rasmussimo, dalla tua piccina”); Nellie Melba (“Keep the sword sheathed ’til I return”). “Care for an orange?” Rundgren asked, taking one from a lower desk drawer and peeling it deftly. He looked disturbed when Helle refused, exclaiming that a person could never eat too many oranges; then he lifted a segment to his lips with his thumb and index finger, fanning his other fingers out like the elegant tail of a bird. According to Maeve Merrow, Rundgren’s vanity focused on his fingers because he subscribed to the theory that they provided visible evidence for the hidden qualities of the penis.

  At two o’clock Propp showed up and apologized briefly for his lateness, though he offered no explanations or excuses. In fact his manner was so imperious that it created an alliance between Helle and Rundgren, two artists joining forces against the rude world of commerce. By this time Rundgren had paged through to the end of the score, sometimes pausing to scrutinize a single passage, sometimes flipping through whole sections without so much as a glance. Did Propp have any idea, he asked, how expensive it would be to produce this opera? Not to mention how impossible it would be to find a mezzo who’d agree to sing strapped to a pole? But Rundgren’s exercise of power through indirection was a version of what Helle had grown up with: she knew how to read the signs, the way those beautiful hands first lifted, then weighed, and at last fondled the score. What wonderful smells, the smells of greasepaint, dust, orange peel! Down the long dark hallway traveled the sound of the orchestra playing the cheerful tune of Coppélia’s first-act mazurka: dah dee da-da, dah dee da. Helle imagined the entire corps de ballet leaping extravagantly across the stage, where, if all went well, professional singers would perform Lahloo. Maeve Merrow, Rundgren was saying, would be wonderful for Nanna. Difficult, but worth the effort. A soprano with presence. Siv Sonnengard for Lahloo? The critics loved her voice and hated her acting—but if she didn’t have to move? Roman Grabowski, of course, for Rattail, and Charles Prince, more popularly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, for the Harrow. Maeve couldn’t stand him, which would add to the opera’s erotic tension.