Breath and Bones by Susann Cokal Page A

months. She even took out the matches, always slightly frightening to her with their potential for harm, and lined them up like soldiers. There were twenty-three of them: a number in which she could invest no significance.
    There were, of course, times she’d walk out to the market and occasionally to the King’s Garden, to look at the still-intact Rosenborg castle and turn her face briefly to the sun. Feeling reckless and extravagant, she paid the two
Kroner
which gave her the right to enter the gates during certain hours, brush away the frost, and sit on the dark benches there, surrounded by maidservants, nurses, and a few strolling prostitutes of exceptionally high class. With warmer weather, the wealthy ladies came out, too, twirling their parasols above bonnets and curled fringes, letting their bustles bounce beneath their short jackets in a way that Famke found very fine. She imagined that someday these ladies would stroll past Albert’s paintings—perhaps his
Nimue
—in a big museum; they would wonder about the artist and the model. She felt a thrill of anticipatory pride, and again of hope. It was as if these elegant ladies had promised her that when he achieved his success, he would come back. After all, he found Denmark inspiring, and Pre-Raphaelite painters sometimes married their models.
    While Famke waited, she did a few small things to improve herself. She visited one of the new department stores and bought herself the much-coveted corset. Though it did indeed make her waist even smaller, she didn’t like it. No one had told her it would be so very tight, that it would cut offher breath and make her feel as if she were being smothered with a pillow. Albert didn’t like corsets anyway; he thought they distorted the body, made the spine unnaturally straight and the waist unsupple. She put it at the bottom of the little pile of her clothing.
    On her next excursion she bought a book from a stall by GrÃ¥brødretorv: a Danish-English dictionary. The cover was tattered and some pages missing, but Famke thought the little book would be very useful when Albert came back—or sent for her to join him. Perhaps if she had bought such a book long ago, they’d be together now. In any event, Famke set herself to learn twenty words a day. Her progress was swift; she knew a bit of the pronunciation already, she had a good memory, and there was little else to do. She recited the words on her walks, barely noticing the tulips that bloomed in the tenement yards or the strings of smelly flounder stretched to dry among masts in the canals and harbors:
Pellucid . . . effulgent . . . gorgeous
. . .
    She thought of writing Albert a letter using these words, but she didn’t know his address. If she’d had the money she might have traveled to London to look for him; but what a girl might accomplish in person would be impossible for a mere slip of paper. A letter would never find him, whereas he knew exactly where to find her.
    So Famke merely sat and waited for life to begin again.

Kapitel 7
    [ . . . ] a pleasant park, originally laid out in the French style but afterwards altered in accordance with English taste. It contains two cafés, a pavilion for the sale of mineral waters, etc., and is a great resort of nurses and children.
    K. B AEDEKER ,
N ORTHERN G ERMANY (W ITH EXCURSIONS, ETC .)
    Finally, there came the day Famke had food only to last out the week, and no money after that. She would have to find work. But who would engage a seventeen-year-old orphan who’d run out on her last position? She had no references, no friends, no way of earning next week’s beans and bread without selling herself.
    NÃ¥
, she had one friend. With her last
Øre
she bought a sheet of writing paper and a pencil, and she wrote to Sister Birgit.
    They met outside the King’s Garden. Birgit had stolen a few minutes by announcing a trip to the market; she carried an old basket heavy with