Breath and Bones (20 page)

On the long voyage, as his hands blistered and burst and blistered again, Viggo came to depend on Birgit's letter. The pages on which it was written became worn and velvety along their creases, faded where he'd held them in the sun.

The letter was his one contact with his vanished homeland and mother tongue, for his fellow sailors were of varying nations and spoke an abbreviated English together. It was also his connection to familiar people, Birgit and Famke and, by implication, the orphanage and all Danes. Finally, from that letter he was able to piece together a most fascinating story: a story in which he, in some significant way, was participating.

Birgit was somewhat more candid in writing to Famke than she had been with Viggo in her office—but only somewhat. He read of Famke's
“mistake” and, more gravely, her “fall.” He could not believe that these terms applied to her conversion to Mormonism; however painful that was to Mother Birgit, in the outside world he had found religion to be of little importance. After several rereadings, it occurred to him that Famke's “fall” might refer to something else entirely. Perhaps, he thought with slow-dawning awareness, she had never married her painter.

An unwed orphan living with her artist-lover, still under the protection of a Catholic nun: that was an intriguing situation. What was it in the girl that made the Mother Superior stand by her, despite what Birgit clearly saw as a betrayal? Viggo conjured up that picture of young Famke bent over her soap pot, stirring and smiling, peering through the steam at him with those brilliant eyes—surely the last image that would appeal to a nun . . .

Finally, just a few days from Boston Harbor, a thought crept into Viggo's mind: If Famke's painter had not married her, she was still free. She could fall in love with somebody else.

The district was a barren and unpromising desert, but the industrious Mormons set to work at once to plough and plant and began that system of irrigation which has drawn out the latent capabilities of the soil and made the Utah valleys among the most productive regions in the country. [ . . . ] in spite of numerous collisions with the U. S. Government on the question of polygamy, the history of the city and territory has been one of steady progress and development
.

B
AEDEKER'S
U
NITED
S
TATES
(
STATEMENT DRAWN UP IN THE OFFICE OF THE
P
RESIDENT
OF THE
C
HURCH OF
L
ATTER
-D
AY
S
AINTS
)

The morning after Famke's second wedding, the silkworms hatched. In the adobe hut that Heber's sons had built for the textile business, they came crawling out of their tiny blue egg sacs and launched themselves at the mulberry leaves that the three wives hastily chopped and mashed for their infant jaws. With the older children, Famke was allowed inside the hut to marvel at this miracle of transformation and the future of Prophet City, the larvae and their mash laid over wide tables that smelled of the linseed oil (remnant of a previous venture in flax) stored beneath.

“But hold your breath,” Sariah cautioned Ephraim, Brigham, Anna, and Nephiah. “You can blow a thousand of them away at once, they're that small. And”—she looked hard at Famke, who was gritty-eyed from lack of sleep—“no coughing.”

Famke wondered if Sariah might have listened through the night and guessed the secret of the bedsheets; but she put the suspicion out of her mind, deciding that Sariah would never say anything to Heber about such an indelicate matter. She attended, instead, to the worms, which seemed a remarkably frail vehicle for the hopes of a township. They were invisible until she adjusted her expectations and found the yellow-gray wisps, smaller than her own fingernail parings, that lay like a web over the pulped leaves.
They seemed to have nothing in common with the sturdy pigs and geese of her Dragør days.

Heber, however, was enraptured with this increase in his livestock, an advancement in his grand scheme. “This will be something to show the naysayers in town,” he said in a rare moment of boastfulness. “All those who doubted the plan!”

Sariah laid her hand on her husband's arm. Her eyes actually appeared to be moist. “‘They that fight against Zion and the covenant people of the Lord shall lick up the dust of their feet; and the people of the Lord shall not be ashamed.' Nephi 6:13.”

“Very true, my dear.” Heber patted that bony hand, still gazing at his new pride and joy, his voice containing only the slightest hint of reproof. “And of course if we arouse shame in our neighbors, we hope it may turn them toward respect and industry.”

Famke suppressed a sound. By her own observations, this was not an industry in which the townspeople wished to share.

It was, however, an undertaking of significant interest to those who followed Mormon affairs. In the next days, both the
Salt Lake City Daily News
and the
Daily Tribune
—one Mormon, one Gentile—sent correspondents to inspect the nursery tables (now prudently covered in thin layers of cheesecloth, to keep the growing worms where they belonged) and to question Heber about his plans. “The future of the Saints is in threads,” Famke heard him say again, and the correspondents nodded and took notes: one focusing on Heber's early failures with wool, cotton, and linen, the other on his almost certain future success.

Famke managed to take each man aside for some questions of her own. Neither one had heard of Albert Castle or indeed of any British painter in the region, and under the other women's steely, speaking eyes, the reporters' initial gallantry turned to priggish rebuke, as if there were something wrong in Famke's artistic interests, something that did not fit their notion of a good Mormon maiden.

Such was not the case with another correspondent, one whom Famke was most surprised to see under Utah's unforgiving turquoise sky.

“Harry Noble,” he introduced himself, with one stubby paw shoved toward Heber's midsection, “also called Hermes. You may have read me in the
New York Times
or
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Journal
. I am presently scribing
a series of articles about the Latter-Day Saints for the papers back east, and I'm interested in this silk-spinning venture of yours.”

With his usual goodwill, Heber took the man's hand and shook it. “I am afraid I do not recollect your work, but I'm pleased to help you if I can. Ursula!” he called over to the clothesline, where she was hiding behind bedsheets and union suits. “Our housemaid, Ursula. She will ask Sister Goodhouse for the key to the silk house.”

Ducking her head in obedience, Famke rushed off to find Sariah. She felt vaguely uneasy at seeing the man in green here; it was as if he had followed her. But of course she was being silly—she could scarcely expect him to remember her at all.

And yet it turned out that, once he saw her full in the face, he did. “We meet again,” he said, grinning and sweeping the hat from his balding head. He held out his hand once more, as if he expected her to shake it as well.

This was provocative news to Sariah, coming along with her ring of clattering keys and her forearms steaming from the washtub. “Where'n have you two met before?” she asked.

“In New York, at Castle Garden.” Noble fingered his side whiskers. “Just as the ship—what was she called? The
Olive Branch
?—arrived with her cargo of new Americans. A most charming scene that was, lending itself to picturesque description. And how are you finding life in Utah, Miss . . . Mrs. . . .”

“She's Miss Summerfield,” Myrtice supplied. She, too, appeared most interested in the proceedings, and had left the children at their lessons under the lone oak tree in order to investigate. Arms crossed, she stood beside her aunt and watched.

“Miss Summerfield?” continued Noble. “Utah and the work of a housemaid, supported by your new faith and a new head of hair—is it the life of which you dreamed?”

Famke would have liked to slap this Harry Noble. All the Goodhouses were looking at her now—even the children—and there was practically no chance that she could take him aside and ask if he had news of Albert. Indeed, she had to prevent him from mentioning Albert now, for if he did there would surely be questions to follow: Why was she, the virgin whom Heber had espoused on board ship, so interested in an unknown painter traveling the West? Who
was
Albert Castle to her? How would she feel about being tossed into the streets of Prophet without a penny to her name?

“Did you not,” said Harry Noble, clearly enjoying himself, “come here with more artistic views in mind?”

Before Famke could panic entirely, and even before she could answer Noble's question, Sariah rattled her keys. “I'm afraid we can spare just a few moments for the viewing,” she said. “There have been many journalists of late, and we've the work of the farm to do. Ursula, you may return to the laundry. Mr. Noble, if you will follow me . . .”

“That unpleasant man,” Sariah called him later, in her confidential hours with Heber. “Did you smell the tobacco on him? And he lifted the gauze and took up a handful of leaves with worms. They'll die sure as I'm born,” she said, and her brow wrinkled; for even without the correspondent's interference, the little things were shriveling up at an alarming rate.

“Sariah, my dear,” Heber said, yawning, “you fret entirely too much.”

Unless I am deceived, the younger generation—the children of Utah—show in their forms the bad fruit of this hard life. They seemed to me, as I studied them in the car coming down, and on the streets the next day, under-sized, loosely built, flabby. Certainly the young girls were pale, and had unwholesome, waxy complexions
.

C
HARLES
N
ORDHOFF
, “S
IGHTS BY THE
W
AY
,”
IN
C
ALIFORNIA
: F
OR
H
EALTH
, P
LEASURE, AND
R
ESIDENCE

My dear,” Heber said on Famke's next night with him, “I could not but overhear some part of what that correspondent said to you.” Famke's fingers went suddenly cold, and she felt the perspiration freezing over her body. She sat up and coughed.

Heber waited patiently. He was still sticky and hot, but he reached across the space between them and patted her on the back. The Utah dust often affected immigrants this way, and his newest wife would soon learn to live with the tickle in her lungs.

Famke gathered her wits. “Men who write for papers are prone to lies,” she said, though she did not quite believe it herself. Did not the papers say, just beneath the titles,
All the truth that's fit to print
?

“I can't think why he might lie about this,” Heber said, patting her again although there was no need. His hand lingered on her shoulder blade and melted the ice there. “Is it true you have an interest in art?”

How delightful, he was thinking; Famke had that refined European sensibility by which even a housemaid could appreciate the best of culture. He imagined the two of them strolling arm in arm down a long gallery of glass and steel, discussing the sculptures on either side. Tall white figures from mythology, suitably draped; potted palms and, somewhere in the background, a fountain's song, perhaps a violin. But galleries like that existed only in Europe.

Famke said cautiously, “I do like to see paintings. Some paintings.”

Paintings, then—panelled walls with green-brown oils: Romantic landscapes, pastured animals, peasant girls with clean white feet. Heber felt a warm wave pass over him, and his hand moved to the other shoulder blade.

“There is a small museum in Salt Lake City,” he said, “run by a Professor Barfoot directly across from the Tabernacle. Perhaps the next time I go into the city, you could accompany me.”

Famke's skin flushed, the chill fully past. It was perfectly natural to ask, “Could we go soon? I would like it very much.”

Heber pulled her into his arms, his brown beard tangling with her flame-colored curls. “As soon as I can manage it, my dear. Perhaps after the silkworms pupate; you will not be so needed here then. They are delicate, you see, at this stage in their lives. We must do all we can to provide them with the proper climate . . .”

While Heber dreamed aloud of his people's future, Famke sank back onto her pillow among the damp bedclothes, worn out by both the promise of a treat and its deferral. She might learn something about Albert in this museum . . . She went to sleep and began to dream instantly. In that dream, worms were gnawing their way into her lungs.

The next night, the worms emerged from her mouth and nose, spinning their artful cocoons to smother her, and she woke up clawing at her face. After that, on the nights Heber spent in her bed, she occasionally woke to find her arms shoving him away, as if he were to blame—though, curiously enough, the times she was able to breathe often came at the end of his map-making, when they lay in each other's arms and sweat glued their underclothes to their skins. At those moments she felt cleansed, and she imagined the dirt of Utah had left her body; then her lungs moved quietly, and she was able to think about how much better still she would feel once it was Albert who took her in his arms, Albert who entered her body and watched the changes in her face and gave her that gorgeous, hungry feel of
wanting
something . . . the feeling that Heber also gave her, true, but in a much less exquisite way than she knew Albert could. Albert always left her wanting, and the tremblings that Heber effected put an end to want.

“Could we visit the museum soon?” she asked each time, and each time Heber promised it would indeed be soon—but not immediately.