Breath and Bones (24 page)

Nimue, in her filmy nightdress, surrounded by bloody ice.

The engraving was no bigger than Famke's palm and, to her eye, crude, but even under the title
Vivien
it was clearly Albert's masterwork—which she learned the captain of the
Lucrece
had sold at a recent auction for “a mere two hundred dollars” and which constituted “no great accomplishment for this promising artist, but nonetheless a work dedicated to beauty and not in the least bit vulgar.”

Nimue. Albert.

And here at last, the clue she'd been seeking: “It is to be hoped that the
artist, reportedly bound for the mines near Denver, Colorado, will bring the same sensibility to painting the women of that wilderness.”

Famke's eyes danced feverishly around the lounge. The page swam before her, until she could not make out the least detail, and the magazine dampened in her hands. She grabbed another journal from the table and coughed into it.

One face looks out from all his canvasses [ . . . ]

A queen in opal or in ruby dress
,

A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,

A saint, an angel;—every canvass means

The same one meaning, neither more nor less.

He feeds upon her face by day and night
,

And she with true kind eyes looks back on him

Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:

Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;

Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;

Not as she is, but as she fills his dream
.

C
HRISTINA
R
OSSETTI
,
“
I
N AN
A
RTIST'S
S
TUDIO
”

Among us, when an unhappy woman succumbs to these distractions her fate is determined by poverty, betrayal, or some other motive springing from the mysterious depths of the heart. From the little I gathered concerning these poor girls, I judge that here this is not so. Rather they dispose of their attractions as a piece of merchandise. The traffic is in cold blood, as if it were a question of liquors or cloth. [ . . . ] And jewelry shops, restaurants, hotels and dance halls stimulate business by the presence of a pretty woman, much as they might employ a music-box or a bowl of goldfish
.

G
UILLERMO
P
RIETO
,
A J
OURNEY TO THE
U
NITED
S
TATES

The city is full of thrift, of life, and trade is always splendid
.

F
REDERICK
E. S
HEARER
, E
D
.,
T
HE
P
ACIFIC
T
OURIST

Heber returned home the next morning with a heavy heart and no Famke. As the Goodhouse family poured out of the house and stable and worm hut into the weak yellow sunshine—somehow the season had turned to autumn—he saw his other two wives casting their eyes about, looking for her. One light, one dark, they exchanged a speaking look.

But the children claimed Heber's first attention. They jumped about, putting their hands into his coat pockets and tugging at his shirt. “Candy! Candy!” the little ones shouted. Ephraim, Alma, and Brigham stood apart with their arms coolly folded as if the three of them, at sixteen, fourteen, and thirteen, were above it all. They wanted the candy as much as the others, but they would not let their father know.

Heber had forgotten to buy sweets, and in fact he had returned home only on the slender chance that Famke would have found her way there before him. For these various reasons, he and his children were disappointed.

“Where have you been?” Sariah hissed, as Heber directed the boys to
unpack the crates of wooden spindles and reels he had bought while Famke put her belly up to the doctor's inspection. Sariah's voice sounded sharp, but she laid a gentle hand on his arm. “I didn't sleep a wink, I was that worried about you.”

“And where is Ursula?” Myrtice asked. In this light she looked pasty to Heber, and her usual robustness was subdued. He couldn't tell if she were hopeful or solicitous when she asked, “Is she rightly ill?”

Heber leaned against the wagon to keep from collapsing. He hadn't slept either, spending the night combing the streets for his young wife instead. “Ursula has disappeared.”

“What?” the other two exclaimed together.

Heber closed his eyes, lest he see un-Saintly glee in theirs. “I left her at the doctor's surgery,” he explained. “Finstuen says she ran out before he could examine her properly—perhaps it was her first visit to a doctor, and she did not know what he had to do. He said she seemed agitated and jittered when he—” Heber looked at the children, round eyes blinking up at him. “I spent all night searching,” he finished, “but she seems to have vanished completely. I fear she has fallen into a bad element.”

Sariah and Myrtice were silent, and he imagined the two of them exchanging those glances that excluded everyone else, even the children, even himself, from their wordless communication. But then he did not want to see anything; he kept his eyes closed, feeling light-headed enough to swoon. If Famke was not here, either, she was well and truly gone. Vanished into the dust of the Salt Lake City streets.

“She'll turn up again,” Sariah said at last, and she pulled her niece forward.

Myrtice put her arm beneath Heber's elbow and kissed his brow, for all the world as if she were his mother rather than his wife. “I have some wonderful news,” she said.

It must be good to be a man in Denver, Famke thought, especially a man with money in his pocket. Perhaps he had just sold a horse or a cartful of silver ore; perhaps he'd been cowboying upon a ranch in the flatlands. He might be light or dark, speak English or what she thought must be some
savage tongue; perhaps Mexican. Whoever he was, here he could buy himself not only a woman's company but also an evening's entertainment, a meal with fresh meat, a new suit of clothes. But Famke was a woman, and young, and not terribly prosperous.

She tried to convince herself that the huge, rough, rushing city of brick buildings and carriages resembled Copenhagen. It emanated the stench that accompanied all flourishing enterprises: coal smoke, sewers, carthorse dung; and in that respect it was like home. Within fifteen minutes of leaving the station, she had seen three mutilated Indians, five gun-holstered ranchers, and whole flocks of what must have been
Ludere
. Seeing how many of them had curled and fluffed their hair to wildness, she wished she had not been so quick to toss her plain black wig into the darkness when at last her train crossed over the Utah border. She who had always enjoyed being looked at now felt painfully conspicuous, walking the boards of Holladay Street in her yellow shawl, casting about for a hotel or restaurant that might shelter a lone female and give her a moment in which to think. She was thirsty and wished she had a change of clothes, something nicer than her Mormon homespun; she also wished she had a companion who might know where to start seeking one British painter in a warren of brash, confident, spitting westerners. She had not counted on Denver being so big.

Famke stopped and let the foot traffic flow around and occasionally bump into her. She wetted the shawl end in her saliva and dabbed at her eyes, but even when she was finished, they felt gritty, in testimony to her lack of sleep—she had watched the sun rise somewhere around Delta, Colorado, where a stockyard filled the air with the reek of blood and the mountains of white and brown bones inspired a lonesome feeling that very nearly made her cry.

Seeing those jumbled ossuaries, suddenly she'd been homesick for Prophet, for Heber's kind arms and the intimate bustle of family life. She had to remind herself, firmly, that she was sicker with longing for Albert, that she had fit much better into his life than into the Goodhouses', that he had almost certainly sent her a letter at Fru Strand's house (of course he had!) and must be waiting and wishing for her now. How happy he would be to see her . . . If only she could sit and catch her breath and wits, she would devise a course of action. It was not as if she could go into the next building—the bright blue tiles on the doorstep spelled out M. S
ILKS
—and
ask for advice. Indeed, she saw only men passing through that elaborately carved door, and with a quick suspicion of what the place was, she walked briskly on until she could turn a corner.

Even there, however, she was unsafe. A man stepped up as soon as she appeared, and she saw a long chain of suits and hats and cigars scattered down the boardwalk.

“Do you have your own room, sister?” This one's hair was barbered and he wore tidy if inexpensive clothes; he even held his hat in his hands as he addressed her. “How much for an hour?”

Famke understood immediately: The finer prostitutes had their houses on the big boulevard, but the itinerant lower class took to the side streets, among the Chinese laundries and the bright posters advertising Bones and Tambo minstrel shows, patent medicines, and lawbreakers with a price on their heads. Wherever she went, she was bound to be taken for a
Luder
, for she must have about her the air of a woman without a man's protection—a woman looking for a man.

Her hesitation gave this man confidence. “Eight bits should be enough,” he said; “I won't take the whole hour.” He seized her elbow in a gesture far too eager for gallantry.

“
Fanden!
” Famke shook him off, frustrated and enraged. She summoned her best English to shout, “You bloody, miserable devil!”

But that was not what rid her of him. In her access of emotion, she bent over in a paroxysm of coughing, and he fled in disgust.

Yes, in Denver it was best to be a man.

These are for my brother,” Famke told the hairy little clerk in the clothier's. She held up two white shirts, nearly identical; she couldn't see why one should cost seventy-five cents and the other a dollar, so she chose the cheaper one. Another $1.25 bought a pair of gray cotton-blended trousers that the clerk assured her could not be distinguished from pure wool “except on very close inspection, ma'am.” He smirked, as if to imply something about the inspection she might be giving them.

Famke leveled him an icy blue stare and ordered a cotton coat to go with
the trousers, even though the clerk hinted with the same disdainful delicacy that wintry weather was coming soon. She rounded out the costume with a string tie for seven cents, suspenders for a quarter, and a soft felt hat for fifty cents, and she left the shop having surrendered $6.07 and a good deal of her dignity, which she hoped to regain as soon as she could change into her new apparel.

It was miserable to be a woman in Denver, she had decided, even a Bohemian one. And it seemed so easy to become a man.

In the simple hotel room she'd engaged, the Mormon union suit came in handy; she had forgotten to buy masculine underwear, and the clothes would not hang right without it. Yet despite that Saintly intervention, she found the pants chafed her inner thighs, and when she belted them the in-seam rubbed uncomfortably Down There, where the embroidered map grew scratchy. Well, she could not imagine dressing this way long; she would ignore this little discomfort as she had ignored so many worse ones while posing. Her own boots were fine for now, and when she coiled her hair up into the hat she thought the hotel mirror reflected a passable young man. On the thin side, perhaps, but so were many who came to town after weeks of eating hardtack and working a mine.

She had hired the room for herself and a husband, so she expected no difficulty in coming or going as either man or woman; and indeed the proprietress (furtively enjoying a bottle of bitters beneath her counter) paid little attention as Famke strode through the lobby imitating Albert's firm, fast gait.