Breath and Bones. Susan Cokal

      Unbridled Books

      Denver, Colorado

      Copyright © 2005 Susann Cokal

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Cokal, Susann.

      Breath and bones / Susann Cokal.

      p. cm.

      ISBN 1-932961-06-2 (alk. paper)

      1. Artists’ models—Fiction. 2. Women immigrants—Fiction.

      3. Danish Americans—Fiction. I. Title.

      PS3553.O43657B74 2005

      813'.6—dc22

      2005000016

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

       Book Design by SH • CV

      First Printing

       To three generations of Familjeflickor—

      TOVE RASMUSSEN

      GUNVER HASSELBALCH

      KRISHNA COKAL

      GRY HASSELBALCH

      Altid med de bedste hensigter.

      Beauty like hers is genius.

      DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

       PROLOGUE

      Hygeia Springs, or Hygiene: 26.2 miles from the western (narrow gauge) rail terminus at Harmsway, with tracks presently being extended to the village itself. It is halfway up the mountain and so situated as to promote respiratory hygiene and health, with picturesque scenery on every side. The hospital building was erected at a cost of $80,000 and is not equaled by any other such institution in the West; thus for the last half-decade it has rivaled the nearby gold mines in its contributions to the region’s prosperity. The visitor may enjoy the naturally carbonated spring waters or tour the small but none the less distinguished gallery of paintings, privately owned and free to the public on the first Monday of each month. Of several good hotels, the Celestial is the best.

      FREDERICK E. SHEARER,

      THE PACIFIC TOURIST, REVISED EDITION, 1892

      The cemetery seemed to roll on for miles, its plinths and statues struggling through the folds of a hillside thinly dusted white. A strange situation for a house of art, the widow thought; but these graves, like the mine tailings on the mountain below or the crenellated fortress above, were nothing to her.

      Two men met her at the fortress door. One was tall and raw and bony, with a disturbing stripe of pink scalp showing, as if he had been attacked by savages. His hands, also, were knotted with scar tissue, white ridges straining against the bones beneath. The other man, just slightly shorter, wore silken gloves, as if to say his own hands would do no more work on this earth; from his dark spectacles and blank expression, she surmised that he was blind. She did not ask their names, and they did not need to ask hers. She already knew the tall man, knew he was of her native country. She could speak as she wished, and he would translate.

      “We are honored.” The blind man spoke English, but quite clearly. “Thank you for traveling all this way.”

      “It was my husband’s wish.” She saw no need to pretend she was glad of it—though she was very glad finally to be unburdening herself of the crate and its contents. “Your drivers are opening the box now.”

      The taller man translated for the blind one, then turned back to her.

      “Would you like to see where it will hang?” he asked, and she supposed she would.

      There were four rooms to the gallery, each one feebly seeping light through narrow windows. The first two were crowded, with pictures hung nearly floor to ceiling and some of the frames knocking against each other.

      The blind man served as guide. He remembered the placement of each picture and identified for her: “Muses by Holman Hunt . . . Mother and Child . . . Rossetti . . . the old Christiansborg Castle, painted by the Dane Christen Købke.” He mispronounced that name, but she didn’t bother to correct him.

      In the third room, the style of the pictures changed; even the untrained visitor could see they were the work of a single artist, and one who preferred to paint the same subject several times: women with spears, women with masks, women with fishes’ tails. Some of the canvases had been patch-worked, cut apart and resewn, with layers of paint crumbling off into colored dust at the seams. Every one of them featured a woman with flaming red hair and sharp, pale features—a woman the widow would rather not see here.

      The blind man perhaps felt the same way, for he chose not to dwell on these pictures. “Figures from mythology,” he merely said, and he unlocked the door to the fourth room, the one few visitors ever saw. The thin windows there were covered in velvet, making the room a tenebrous cave.

      The widow hesitated. She had a mild dislike of the dark.

      “This will be your painting’s home,” the tall man said, as the blind one felt his way inside.

      “It is not my painting,” she was quick to correct him. “My husband left it to your gallery in his will.”

      The tall man turned the screw for the gaslight. “And this is not my gallery. The owner lives up the mountain.”

      Light from the glass globes flared over the room and then subsided. Still the widow’s eyes were dazzled. At first she saw only empty walls, and then something that made her raise the black handkerchief to her lips.

      “Er det—”

      “Yes,” said her countryman. “It is.”

      It was a large cylinder with thick, slightly green glass walls. The ends of the cylinder were of glass, too, and the craftsmanship was so fine that the joinings were scarcely visible. But it was what the cylinder held inside that constituted the great wonder: the body of a woman, floating in a clear liquid, with a blue velvet gown and hair such a brilliant red that at first glance it appeared unnatural.

      Again the blind man guessed the widow’s thoughts. “She is real,” he said. “True flesh, preserved in alcohol and other fluids. Go on, step closer and look.”

      The spectacle presented an irresistible lure; against a good part of her own will, the widow moved nearer. The corpse’s hair and dress rippled faintly with the vibrations of her footsteps, while the scent of alcohol burned her nostrils. Up close, the body looked less alive; the flesh was a dead, arsenic white, and it, too, seemed to ripple. The face had lost some of its shape, as if the bones had turned to rubber; and most grotesque of all, the eyes were missing.

      “Melted,” the tall man whispered in their native tongue, when he saw where she was looking, “eaten away in the alcohol. But he”—gesturing toward the other man—“he doesn’t know.”

      The blind man clearly did not understand. “Is she not beautiful?” he asked, with his face turned toward the coffin as if in all the world he could see this one thing. He touched the top of the glass curve with the gloved hand, and the widow