Margit Sandemo: The Ice People 12 - Yearning

She took a deep breath to suppress her nausea and then she pulled the curtain just enough to the side so that she could slip in. There was much more room behind the curtain than she had expected. It wasn’t just the bed that hid itself behind the drapery. There were also a few chandeliers, one on either side of the bed, though there was no risk of anything catching fire. There was a table with fruit and wine – she could do with a glass of wine now but didn’t dare – and there were small, fine cherubs on the ceiling and walls.

Villemo cast a quick glance at the wall behind the bed. It was so heavily decorated with baroque garlands and other embellishments that it was impossible to see any peephole. But she knew that it was bound to be there.

She closed her eyes for a short second. Then she began to take off her shoes.

‘Careful now, Villemo. Sensuous but never vulgar. You’re a lady through and through. How on earth am I supposed to be a sensuous lady when I know that the dirty old lecherous man is watching me?... But what if it were Dominic standing there in front of me? I have no problem visualising that! What was it the song said about the Mountain King? Who turned out to be Dominic?’

Things immediately became easier for her then.

‘It’s only Dominic. He’s the only one who’s looking at me. Him and only him. It’s okay for me to undress for him.’

She had managed to get her shoes off and climbed into the low bed. As she stood there she lazily and meditatively pulled off her stockings. Then she began to untie her bodice. True, she had never been a shrinking violet, but this made her feel ill at ease. She had had enough of men secretly gazing at her in the barn, and that was when she’d had her clothes on!

Villemo tried desperately to imagine that Dominic was standing right behind her somewhere – and she also tried to think of other things.

She could have experienced worse things. The colonel could have insisted on going to bed with her, which she would never have allowed. Never! Then there would have been no hope at all for Dominic. Although this was unpleasant, it was still fairly innocent.

Now her bodice was undone. She slowly started to peel off her dress so that her shoulders were now bare.

Villemo had no plans to return to Gabrielshus. She wanted to be with Dominic because now he needed her. After all, he had nobody else.

When would she ever learn? Once more she was doing the same stupid thing as when she blindly followed Eldar Black Forest in order to save him. Once more, she thought that the man of her dreams couldn’t manage without her. And her fervent affection for Dominic drove her to him. These were two crucial reasons.

She had accepted that they had to give up seeing each other during their visit at Gabrielshus ... But nobody should have denied them their moment of saying goodbye. They would have been able to give in to their feelings then, because there would have been no risk of the situation developing any further.

Her disappointment that he had left without saying goodbye had been such a blow to her. And now she was driven on by something that was almost a fever. She just had to see him again because she felt that it was her right. She wanted to save him from an awkward situation, help him, and yet, underneath it all, lay her subconscious decision that she wanted him and she wanted him now.

For a brief second, what she was now about to do had seemed absolutely irrelevant because she had been focusing so intensely on her meeting with Dominic. Now she suddenly woke up from her reverie. Her dress fell down on the bed. She picked it up elegantly and folded it neatly over the back of the chair next to her.

Before she took off her slip, she let her underwear fall lightly and discreetly. Then she pulled her slip up and over her head. She was naked.

Dominic was there, invisible behind the wall. The Mountain King didn’t enter here. Only Dominic and nobody else!

So she stretched out her arms, reaching her fingers up as if towards a radiant sun so that her slender body became taut and elongated. She smiled secretively as if she was waiting for her beloved. She stood like this for some moments turned towards the wall where she knew that the peephole was. Then she let her arms drop and in one single, long gliding movement she crouched and lay down, stretched out in a relaxed resting position.

She couldn’t do anything more. She didn’t want to do anything more. There had to be a limit as to how much of herself she should give away.

The servant entered the room outside, coughing discreetly on the other side of the curtains.

“My master is most pleased. You, Miss, offered your services most tastefully. No exaggerations, no consciously provocative movements. The young man has already been released and sent down to the harbour. Nobody has told him why he has been spared.”

Villemo sat up.

“Thank you. Please send my greetings to your master and thank him for his help. May I ... May I get dressed now?”

“Yes, my master is most pleased. I’ll stay here until you come out.”

Never before had Villemo put on her clothes so quickly. As she pulled on her stockings, she shouted out to the servant, “It was certainly very considerate of your master that he held back so much and didn’t bother me with his presence.”

“Oh, well.” The servant hesitated. He made it quite obvious that the colonel wasn’t in the vicinity because he didn’t lower his voice very much. “That was probably not why my master wanted it in this manner. It gives more of a feeling of ... what shall I say? A frisson. Something that’s forbidden, you know.”

Villemo kept sitting with her stocking in her hand. She swallowed. She felt a sensation of unpleasantness. The French had a word for it – she had heard Aunt Anette use it about those men that had peeped through the cracks in the walls of the barn. It was something similar to “voyeur” and the meaning had stuck in her consciousness as something sleazy and offensive. Villemo had interpreted it as someone who secretly observes you.

Suddenly she shuddered. There had never been a Dominic behind the wall – that was something she had known all along, she had just tricked herself into believing it. She had been made dirty by an old man-about-town’s greedy eyes. A man who could no longer win a woman, who ... She didn’t have the energy to think about it. Dominic was safe, which was the most important thing!

She resolutely put on her clothes and slipped out between the drapery. There the servant stood with a pair of scissors in his hand.

“If you will allow me ...”

“Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Go ahead.”

She heard the sound of a thick lock of hair being cut off. There was bound to be a bit of an unevenness there, but she’d do anything for her Dominic!

“What’s the time?” she asked as she gathered her things.

“It’s almost midnight. I’ll show you to the door. Do you have somewhere to go?”

“Yes!”

She would say anything just to get out from there as quickly as possible.

“A young woman like you shouldn’t be out on her own at night,” the servant said. He looked embarrassed as he held Villemo’s long, thick lock of hair in his hand.

“I’ll run. And I can run fast. Goodbye.”

She felt the cobblestones under her feet, heard the echo from her own footsteps bouncing off the nearby houses. Fortunately, not many people were out at this time of night and she ran quickly past the few who were.

She should have asked the servant where the boat was berthed. But he probably didn’t know.

‘Oh, I hope I’ll reach it in time, if only I can make it! I’m not so generous that I did that horrible thing in the colonel’s house completely unselfishly. I must get to see Dominic again. I don’t give a damn about anything else, about the curse of the Ice People, being a virtuous woman, the war ... all that matters is having Dominic’s arms wrapped around me. Nobody can take that away from me. Not again. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye at Gabrielshus ... to take leave for one, brief minute from everything that I’d forsaken and to rest in his arms, even platonically. I had looked forward to that with such yearning.