David Ebershoff - The Danish Girl

In any case, Greta also thought of herself as the least likely to marry. When a young man-a pan-faced Dane of a declining aristocratic clan or the son of an American steel magnate touring Europe for the year-asked her to the ballet or for a sail through the canals of Christianshavn, her first thought was always: You won’t catch me. All she wanted to be was a bluestocking: a perpetually young woman who was free to paint daily in the light of the window and whose only social company occurred at midnight when a group of eight would meet in Sebastian’s, her favorite public house, for two quick snifters of cherry-flavored Peter Heering before the long-faced police would turn up at one o’clock to shut down the house for the night.

But even Greta knew that not only was this silly, it was also impossible. Why, young Miss Greta Waud would never be permitted to live like that at all.

When she was a little girl, she used to write over and over in her penmanship notebook, “Greta Greta Greta,” deliberately leaving off the “Waud” as if to test what it would be like to be plain old Greta-something no one ever called her. She didn’t want anyone to know who her family was. Even as an adolescent, she never wanted to coast on any sort of connections. She despised anyone who relied excessively on antecedents. What was the point?

She had come to Denmark as a girl when her father, a long-armed man with a lamb-chop beard, took his post at the embassy. “Why would you want to do that?” Greta had said when he first told her of his new assignment. “Now, Greta,” her mother replied, “be nice. He’s your father.” What Greta was forgetting was that his mother, her very own grandmother, Gerda Carlsen, for whom Greta had been named, was a Dane, with blond hair the color of beechwood. Raised on Bornholm, Gerda was known for the blood-red poppies she wore behind her ears-and for being the first girl in the family to leave the Baltic island, sailing not for Copenhagen, like most curious youngsters intent on leaving their family behind, but for southern California, which in those days was like telling your family you were emigrating to the moon. A few years of horsework on the right ranch brought her to the attention of Apsley Waud, Sr., and soon enough the tall girl from Bornholm who wore her hair to her hips and pinned with poppies was a California matriarch. When Greta’s father told her he was taking the family back to Denmark, it was a bit insensitive of her-even Greta had to admit-to fail to make the connection, not to realize that this was her father’s way of making restitution to his mother, to blue-eyed Gerda Carlsen Waud, who lost her life when her son, Apsley Jr., then just a young man, led her to the lip of Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco to take her photograph in front of the vista and then watched in horror as the ant-gnawed soil crumbled away and flung his mother into the canyon below, down into the deadly Y-branch of a knotty sycamore.

At the Royal Academy in the autumn of 1914, Greta assumed that most people, particularly the administrators, gossiped about two things: the war and her. She always caused a stir, no matter where she went, what with her train of blond hair like a wake behind her. Especially in southern California. Why, it was only last year, when she returned to Pasadena for a summer of tennis and horseback lessons, when one day the boy who drove the butcher wagon caught her eye. His hair was black and curly and his hot hand pulled her up to the front plank-seat and together they rode down to Wilshire Boulevard and back. She watched him manipulate the iron tongs as he unloaded the rib roasts and the racks of lamb at the houses in Hancock Park. On the ride home, not once did the boy try to kiss her, which disappointed Greta, who for the first time had doubts about the length of her yellow hair. At the end of the ride, the boy said only, “So long.” And so Greta shrugged and went to her room. But the next morning, at the breakfast table, her mother, who was thin in the lip, said, “Greta, my dear. Would you please explain this?” Her mother unfolded a piece of stationery from the American Weekly . On it was a cryptic note that simply said, “Does young Miss Greta Waud plan a career in butchery?” For weeks the threat of a society-page exposure shadowed the mansion. Each morning the fingers-in-mouth whistle of the newspaper boy caused the household to freeze in its step. The story never ran, but of course the gossip eventually leaked. For two days the telephone in the upstairs hall rang and rang and rang. Greta’s father could no longer take his lunch at the California Club downtown, and her mother had a devil of a time securing a second source of meat. Soon her parents canceled the summer in California, and Greta returned to Copenhagen in time for the August aurora borealis and the fireworks bursting over Tivoli.

That September at the end of her youth, when war could be heard in the thunderclouds, Greta enrolled at the Royal Academy. On the first day of classes, it surprised Greta when Einar, standing in front of a blackboard dusty with the ghost of a previous lesson, asked her, “And, Miss? Your name?”

When Greta answered the question, Einar-or Professor Wegener, as she thought of him then-marked his class log and moved on. His eyes, which were as brown and wide as a doll’s, returned to her and then jumped away. Judging by his skittishness, Greta began to think he ’d never met an American in his life. She flipped the panel of her hair over her shoulder, as if waving a flag.

Then, early in the school year, someone must have whispered to Einar about her father and the embassy and maybe even the butcher-wagon story-yes, gossip hopped the Atlantic, even then-because Einar became even more awkward around her. It disappointed her that he was proving to be one of those men who found it impossible to be comfortable around a rich girl. This nearly burned her up alive, because she’d never asked to be rich; not that she minded it all the time, but even so. Einar was unable to recommend which paintings to view in Kunstudstill ingen, and incapable of describing the best route to the art supply shop near Kommunehospitalet. She invited him to a reception at the American embassy for a shipbuilder visiting from Connecticut, but he refused. He declined her request for an escort to the opera. He would hardly look at her when they spoke. But she looked at him, both when they met and from far away, through a window as he crossed the academy’s courtyard, his steps short and fast. He was small in the chest, with a round face, skin pale and eyes so dark that Greta had no idea what lay behind them. Simply by speaking to him, Greta could force a flush through Einar’s face from throat to temple. He was childlike, and this fascinated Greta, in part because she had always been so overgrown and outspoken that people had treated her, even when she was little, more or less like an adult. She once asked him, “Are you married, Professor?” and this caused his eyelids to flutter uncontrollably. His lips pushed together as he attempted to say the seemingly unfamiliar word “No.”

The other students whispered about Professor Wegener. “From a family of gnomes,” one girl said. “Was blind until he was fifteen,” said another girl. “Born in a bog,” said a boy who was trying to get Greta’s attention. The boy painted pictures of Greek statues, and Greta couldn’t think of anything more boring, or anyone. When he asked to take her to ride the Ferris wheel in Tivoli she simply rolled her eyes. “Well, Professor Wegener isn’t going to take you, if that’s what you’re waiting for,” the boy replied, kicking his boot against the trunk of an elm.

At home, her mother, ever mindful of the butcher-wagon incident, studied Greta cautiously whenever she returned for the evening, the light of the fireplace revealing nothing in Greta’s eyes. One evening her mother said, “Greta, my dear, if you don’t arrange an escort for your birthday party, then I’m going to have to ask someone for you.” She was needlepointing at the parlor’s hearth, and Greta could hear Carlisle upstairs in his room bouncing a tennis ball. “I’m sure Countess von der Recke ’s son would like to go with you,” Mrs. Waud was saying. “Of course he doesn’t dance, but he ’s a handsome enough boy, as long as you ignore that awful hump, wouldn’t you agree? Greta?” Greta’s mother lifted her pointy face. The fire in the hearth was weak and red, and the tap-tap-tap of Carlisle’s ball filled the room, causing the chandelier to tremble. “When will he stop that?” Mrs. Waud snapped. “Silly tennis ball.” She folded up her needlepoint and stood, her body taking a rigid stance, as if she were an accusatory arrow pointed in the direction of Carlisle’s room. “I suppose there ’s always Carlisle,” she said with a sigh. And then, as if the flames in the fireplace had suddenly leapt higher and brightened the parlor, Mrs. Waud said, “Well, yes, that’s right. There’s always Carlisle. Why not go with Carlisle? He hasn’t found a girl to take, either. You two could go together, the birthday couple.” But Greta, who remained in the parlor’s door frame, protested with her hands and said, “Carlisle? I can’t go with Carlisle! That wouldn’t be any fun. Besides, I’m quite capable of finding my own escort.” Her mother’s eyebrows, which were gray as pigeon feathers, arched up. She said, “Oh, really? Who?”