The History of Danish Dreams: A Novel (6 page)

Her quiescence must also, I think, have been reinforced because Christoffer Teander sat there, every day, bent over his columns, only straightening up to flick away a speck of dust that had fallen onto a lapel as immaculate as his unnaturally white collars, or onto his shirtfronts, which were stiff as the armor in the banqueting hall (fitted out to the Old Lady’s specifications). Such small gestures, which would in others have indicated a lively interest in their outward appearance, made Christoffer look more like a puppet or a jumping jack than ever before, more than when he had, as a little boy, been the mute observer of his parents’ social calls. And since he never spoke to his employees, it never occurred to anyone—not even the housemaids who surveyed his nakedness, without any curiosity, every morning and evening—that behind the lackluster forehead, the unseeing eyes, and the wavering contours there hid a human being. The announcement of his engagement did nothing to alter this impression.

One morning all the family’s social and business acquaintances received a white card announcing the glad tidings of the engagement between Christoffer Ludwig Teander Rabow and Katarina Cornelius Bak, the dean’s daughter. Everyone thought it was a joke. They all knew for a fact that Christoffer Ludwig and the dean’s daughter had never met. For one thing, throughout his childhood and adolescence, Christoffer had only ever left his oversized office on a very few occasions. And for another, he had always been duly escorted by the servants or his parents. And lastly, Katarina had, at these times, been away, visiting the German spas, in vain attempts to cure a cough which, even then, sounded bad. Nevertheless, this card planted a nagging doubt in most minds, since, even though it bore no signature, it was printed in Venus Extra Bold. This typeface, together with the heavy, bittersweet scent of dried Australian carnations, reminded most recipients of Christoffer’s mother and her grip on the future. The Reverend Mr. Cornelius himself was at first taken aback, then angry, then furious. Finally he calmed down and entered, instead, a mood of silent reflection in which, for some days, his thoughts revolved around his daughter, whose silence was broken only by bouts of coughing. At last he sought out Christoffer Teander, unearthing him in his office. Wordlessly, the dean places the invitation in front of him. Christoffer peruses it carefully; then he studiously compares the date set for the engagement with his timetables, and only after having done this does he look at the dean. “It is quite impossible for this engagement to have taken place, unless it occurred in less than half a second,” he says without the trace of a smile.

Cornelius leaves him, convinced that the whole thing is nothing but a bad joke. In his opinion, Christoffer is an idiot, a complete and utter idiot. Amen.

A few months later the wedding invitation arrived. It had been delivered during the night, without anyone’s seeing how this was achieved; it was tasteless and ostentatious; printed in gold on sheets of stiff deckle-edged paper embossed with the Old Lady’s monogram—a silk scarf entwined around a miter; ornamented with cupids carrying champagne bottles in their chubby fists; the Rudkøbing coat of arms running all the way around the edge. It detailed every stage in the course of the great day, from the wedding itself—which was to take place at half-past five in the morning so that all the servants and office managers and printers, who worked on Sundays, could be back in time to start work—through the wedding reception, which would be held in the long courtyard, right up to the dinner in the evening, the schedule for which had been worked out right down to the very last second. It listed the names of the townspeople who would make speeches at this dinner and how long these speeches would be, along with a brief summary of their content and directions as to the length of time allowed for the applause before proceeding with the consumption of a menu—also specified—which presented a monstrous combination of the Old Lady’s partiality for the dishes of her impoverished upbringing and her fascination with wealth. Barley gruel was to be served with the champagne, then a bacon omelette with syrup and crème de menthe, and wine jelly made with Château Margaux and marzipan preserved in duck fat. Coffee, cognac, and the refined potato aquavit that the Old Lady had persisted in preferring to liqueurs and fortified wines would be accompanied by indoor fireworks set off at the stucco ceilings. An eighteen-piece orchestra dressed in firemen’s uniforms would provide music for the dancing. Pralines, whole coffee beans, white bread, pats of butter, and cold griddle cakes with blackcurrant jam would also be served, along with draft lager. With a mind to the close of the evening, four strong and rough characters, four real toughs from a remote village, had been hired and paid to stay sober until daybreak, at which point they would assist the last of the guests to leave the premises; said guests being mentioned by name, both those who stepped willingly into the gray dawn, carrying the last barrel of lager between them, and those who would offer resistance and refuse to go home, thus hindering the tidying up that would allow Monday to start on time. These last would have their bottom teeth knocked out by the toughs, who would then bash their heads against the white beech parquet floor before throwing them out into the street, where they would lie in the gutter in their own blood and snot until a specified time at which they would crawl away. Thus the big house at the end of the square would greet the rays of the morning sun with gleaming windows and an air of industry implying that nothing had occurred, apart from the happy event. That is all, and very best wishes, wrote the Old Lady, particularly to those who have been invited to the dinner—of whom there now followed a list, at the foot of which she had signed her name.

The people of the town accepted this invitation with the same resigned wonder with which they would have observed an eclipse of the moon. Even those who found themselves, to their own surprise, on the list of speakers yielded to the weight of Fate and the Old Lady’s authority and started jotting down headings in line with the summaries provided in the invitation, and the three lawyers who saw that they were going to have their teeth knocked out and would be crawling home from the party made appointments with their dentists and put signs in their windows saying that they would be closed on the day after the wedding. The Old Lady was accorded such great respect that only the Reverend Mr. Cornelius offered any resistance. Into his sermon for the following Sunday he wove a reminder to everyone, in a passage declaring Woe to Ye that laugh at this bad joke and Woe to Ye that are rich, for it will be the worse for you. Then he dressed in black and walked across the square. He found the main door of the house locked, and no one answered when he tugged the bellpull, but it seemed to him that all the windows of the house stared blankly at him. Boiling with rage and primed for a fight, he arrived home to find his daughter in the act of trying on a wedding dress that had arrived from Copenhagen, though no one could say who had placed the order. It fitted her perfectly. It even had an intricate mesh of whalebone worked into it that straightened her crooked back and endowed her figure with a surprising, stately carriage. Similarly, a pad soaked in spirit of camphor had been fixed inside the stiffened bodice. This, together with the peppermint oil which came with the dress and with which the veil was to be sprayed, was intended to ensure that the wedding would not be spoiled by her coughing. Then the Reverend Mr. Cornelius—who had otherwise walked sedately throughout his life—ran to the church, only, on his arrival, to have his rage consolidate around his mouth in a foam that turned blue when he learned that word had been received about the time at which the coach and the other carriages would be arriving; just as the binding of the wreaths had begun, since the Old Lady, unlike other people, would not have fresh floral decorations, but wreaths of dried carnations and orchids that had arrived long before from Madeira; just as the organist had received a list of what was to be played, including not only the usual hymns but also a number of popular old ditties. But the dean was not yet beaten; he had God on his side in the battle against this woman, this horned monster who had never shown her face in church; whom he had never trusted; who, everyone knew, could not conceal her lack of breeding and who now went so far as to demand that improper songs be played in the church. Well, not if he could help it. Then he saw that among the papers pertaining to the wedding—which also contained, apart from the organist’s list, instructions for his, the dean’s, nuptial address; instructions into which had been inserted, within brackets, the points where he would clear his throat and the points where he would raise his head and look out over the congregation—there was a sheet of paper enjoining everyone to remember their umbrellas, since a light shower of rain would fall, as a sign of heaven’s blessing upon the bridal couple and the guests when they were leaving the church. As a final, panic-stricken protest, the dean grabbed the church register, imagining that by removing it he might prevent the wedding. It flew open in his hands, and his anger ebbed away, leaving behind a weary sense of despondency as he read of the wedding between Katarina Cornelius Bak and Christoffer Ludwig Teander Rabow as though it had already taken place. As he leafed farther away from the written pages toward the blank and unforeseeable pages, he found, in his own handwriting, the record of the birth and christening dates of the three daughters to whom Katarina—to her own astonishment and that of everyone around her—would give birth. Then he realized that the universe was against him. For the first time ever, he felt worn out, old, aged; for the first time ever, he felt his age creating a gap between him and the outside world. This feeling stayed with him as, later, he erased the words of criticism in his sermon, the tone of which softened further in the days prior to the wedding as he acknowledged the advantages of marrying his tubercular, weak-chested daughter to the crown prince of a dynasty, even if that prince was as much of a fool and a nincompoop, as much of a nonentity, as Christoffer Ludwig.

The wedding went ahead according to the guidelines laid down in the invitation. At the church, the dean himself led his daughter to the altar where Christoffer stood waiting. He had been accompanied to the altar by Dr. Mahler because he had no family and because no one could trace any friends. He had, after all, grown up alone, among adults. At the altar the two young people look at each other without showing any sign of recognition, and to those standing nearest it looks as though Katarina, her sight possibly hampered by a veil saturated with peppermint oil, clutches at the doctor’s arm in the belief that he is the man she is to marry. No one will ever know for sure whether these two young people had ever laid eyes on each other before. The Reverend Mr. Cornelius sticks scrupulously to his written instructions and the two young faces remain expressionless, apart from during the coughing fits that rack Katarina’s body on several occasions, despite all the precautions, and the absentminded disquiet with which Christoffer’s eyes flicker forlornly several times around his room bereft of clocks. The rain that started to fall as the married couple left the church continued throughout the night with a mysterious energy that had, by morning, transformed the gutters into rivers that carried the drunk and bleeding lawyers away from the deserted square, so that everything could come to pass as it had been foretold.

At no point during the celebrations did the Old Lady put in an appearance.

*   *   *

Amalie was born the youngest of Katarina and Christoffer Ludwig’s three daughters and grew up without ever doubting for one minute that her father was an automaton. The only change brought about in Christoffer’s way of life by his marriage was that every evening after dinner he was led into a sitting room, to his family, where previously he had sat alone in a smoking room where he did not smoke. But his face retained, unaltered, the expression of indifferent courtesy that it had borne since he was a child, and, as always, his eyes were riveted to one of the clocks in the room as though he were following the movements of the hands—which, in all probability, is what he was doing. Opposite him, on the sofa, sat his wife. Because of her infirmity, even embroidery—the only thing in which she had ever shown any interest—was beyond her. On only a handful of occasions did Amalie hear her parents speak to each other. From when they were very small, the three daughters were trained in silence and stillness. The housemaids—who toiled in vain, day and night, to rid the vast house of dust and the compromising smell of the stables that the brown soap and dried violets never quite succeeded in quelling—would often pass through the room, feather dusters in hand. On these occasions they would run a duster over the family group in the belief that they, just like the life-size copies of classical Greek figures, were part of the furniture; an illusion shattered now and again by Katarina’s feeble cough or one of the increasingly more pronounced fluctuations of Christoffer’s silhouette. Nevertheless, it is important that we steer clear of the idea that the Teander family residence was a dead house. Certainly the family are not particularly active; they seem, undeniably, dull as dishwater, but this may be because life in this family—as in the rest of middle-class Denmark at this time—has been shifted from the outer persona of individuals to their inner persona or to their surroundings and, in particular, to the clocks. Thus this waxwork-like couple and their three children exemplify the dream of uniting the unforeseeable in life with the mechanics of clockwork and standard time.

From a very early age, Amalie had populated the silence surrounding her with deafening dreams in which she conquered the world, but not until her grandmother opened the doors of the house to let the people of the town admire the water closet did Amalie discover that her dreams were images of a reality residing within mirrors. It was then that she began her wanderings through the great house. To begin with, her mother tried to prevent it, but she was too weak. Her tuberculosis, already bad by the time of her marriage, had been aggravated by the three times Christoffer had heard his mother’s voice. Like everyone else, he had stopped thinking about the Old Lady. There were those who believed that he had stopped thinking of anything whatsoever, other than time, which is, in itself, such an abstract concept that it dissolves at the thought. So it must have come as a shock when, one night, his mother spoke to him and forced him to get up in a darkness his eyes could not penetrate, and led him, naked, through the deserted house, through empty rooms lit by the moon where Christoffer could see that there was no sign of his mother other than the imperious voice that brooked no denial but led him to a white door, which he opened. Only when he reached the bed did he see that it was occupied by his wife. Christoffer felt the Old Lady’s breath on the back of his neck and obediently lay down on top of the sleeper.