Skagen
Of course, by the end of the day, she had to try to ruin everything. She couldn't hold it together. It was a selfish little impulse. He had forgotten time, which meant they missed the exhibition she had looked forward to and even dressed specifically for, while leaving him wondering how on earth to dress specificially for an exhibition.
Perhaps the key was in something she had said earlier that almost perfect day:
“I have always liked the thought of being a painting.”
“You should have found an artist then”, he replied.
He had said similar things before, going through a catalogue of predominantly male occupations with admirable or at least desirable qualities, from musician or pilot or doctor to plumber, and he knew how she would reply:
“I found you.”
It was a game, and it was music. Of all the women he had known – and it had been quite a few, even if he wasn’t the most horny devil in his circle of acquaintances – she was the one who resembled music the most.
Everyone else were more instrument than symphony, if you were to put it in florid terms. Their intuitions were on a base level, remarkably receptive to his subconscious erotic desires and capable of shaping themselves, positioning themselves, with all the guile of womanhood, to satisfy him. It was their seduction, and it was their measure in times of desperation, what they stooped to, just like he had his:
He stooped to journeys, the magic of the flight or the ride through a landscape, or carelessly strolling through roughly paved Italian streets with caving houses in maroon colors lit by ancient or at least ancient looking street lamps that resembled little huts, where fire elves dwell.
Or shopping – he would spent quite a bit of money, when he had them, to give give a woman that thrill of the hunt. It was a neater trick than just buying them gifts, which was never as great a surprise than one would think, often disappointing and almost always slightly anti-climactic. He was sensitive to that as well.
In a sense it was the same with this trip, except it had been her bidding. She wanted to see Skagen for the artist's light that had made groups of painter's swarm to settle down in the area for generations.
For some reason she had travelled to every inhabited continent on the planet, even further than he, and occasionally with an unsettling appetite for risk taking, which he did not approve of or would not have approved of, if she had been his at the time – but she had never gone to Skagen.
That, he imagined, was a matter of background. She simply did not have the background that take you there, automatically. It was something she aspired to.
So, since it was novel to her, she was at her most cheerful, chipper like a child, as they walked across the beach, late in the morning from the pier to the bakery, on the heavy wet blanket of white sand that turned grey at the touch of the water.
Out there, as he had explained, two oceans collided, waves crashing into each other from opposite directions, and she had picked up on the metaphor and asked, “so who wins?” and he had said, “nobody ever wins; the great seas just enjoy the battle”, and that too had been perfect. She smiled, shook her head and looked into the surf for a very good shell or a flat rock to throw to dazzle him with her powers and precision.
He was in a white suit she had picked for him, feeling a bit like Dean Martin – if it makes sense to say you feel like someone you do not know and can never be. He felt cool, able to take on the whole world. She was in white as well, a soft cotton dress that fell very well from her hips, wrapping itself around her exquisite legs as she walked, even when there was very little wind.
“I feel like we are in one of those Kröyer paintings”, she said. “I should have a sunshade.”
“Maybe I should acquire a walking cane and a moustache.”
“Absolutely not”, she said. “I forbid it. It makes you look too much like a teacher.”
“You can’t run from who you are.”
“You look great in white”, she said. “You tan very well, do you know that? And you have freckles. Tiny little freckles, but they are there. I like that.”
It was almost like an early date. She recreated the magic. She said:
“When you marry, if you marry, you must wear white. You look great in white.”
That was her C minor. He suddenly felt melancholy, and the chill of the West wind, and a slight annoyance about footprints other than their own in the almost pristine sand, and the greedy shrieks of seagulls over their heads.
It was also less glamorous to think about the rusty Fiat from 1982 that waited for them on the parking lot past the dunes, but for a moment they had been perfect together. It was a snapshot.
Only much later he realized how staged it had been – that she had produced it for him, for his sake. It was her parting gift to him, this moment, because she knew he loved her so, in a way she could not reciprocate.
“Remember”, she said as they drove, “the time when we were lounging in the garden, and then this mad little cloud, this infernal black spot in the horizon, comes racing towards us on a clear blue sky?”
“I remember that”, he said. “It unleashed itself right over us, first hail and then snow, in June. That was certainly unusual.”
“It was. It was very strange, indeed.”
“Curiouser and curiouser. Talking playing cards and a smoking caterpillar. What next?”
She had her feet up, the sandals untidy on the floor, and she was tapping restlessly with her fingers.
“The hail struck down all the lilies. White lilies, scattered all over.”
“We had to run for shelter. I'm sure they would have struck us down too.”
“Yes, but there were two lillies that were untouched, standing up straight in the snow afterwards," she said, “I always thought of those as you and I.”
“That’s sweet”, he said. “You want me to pull over?”
She slapped him, lazily, across the chest.
“We don’t have time for that now. Wait, what is the time?”
She never wore her watch, but carried it in her purse. She had three time pieces she liked, all expensive brands she had picked up along the way – he suspected, without mentioning it, at least two of them from former lovers.
“Dammit”, she said. “You fucking idiot.”
“I love you too”, he said, careful to make it as mechanically detached as possible.
“You said you'd keep track of the time. Don't worry, baby, I got it. We’re not going to make it now.”
They always felt they had all the time in the world, but the late brunch had cut heavily into the time budget. Maybe he didn’t really care for the exhibition, after all, because it was one of those out of season independent artist things, which means unrecognized and of little consequence.
But she had wanted it, more badly than he had detected. He said "sorry", but she kept carrying on:
“You’re so lame sometimes. You talk and talk, all your fancy theories about this and that, but you can never even keep a promise. That's why you're gonna end up old and alone, you know.”
His knuckles turned white under the abuse. He took a deep breath, but one was not enough. She even mocked him, sighing heavily.
Sometimes he was certain she was a witch or a demon in disguise, a very lovely disguise, but definitely from somewhere in hell, sent to torment him for his past.
She took delight in it. It was obvious. Who cares about an hour lost, here or there, when you enjoy yourself?
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Idiot.”
He pulled over. He knew it was ridiculous, and part of him expected to burst into laughter at any time, but the tension had not built up to that point yet, and they were wasting even more time doing this, and now he also had to pull over.
“Don’t do this in the car", he said, as he turned off the engine. “Do not do it.”
“I can get out of the car”, she said and opened the door. They were both archers, temperamental and slightly melodramatic, when tempers got flaring. They both acted out, immediately, and in unpredictable manners.
She was out of the car, and he got out of the car too, blocking her way as she tried to make her escape.
“Please, take it easy. Try to calm down.”
“I am very calm. Very very calm”, she said, stomping her foot on the ground.
He started laughing. The tension was broken. She still sulked, but he could tell she thought it was funny too.
“Please get in the car. Please, please? I will try to make it up to you.”
“You ruined everything”, she said, back inside the car.
“I know.”
“I wanted today to be perfect. We don’t know how many days we have together. It’s not working, you know.”
“I know it’s not working. We just have to keep hoping… and praying.”
Part of him wanted to rise up, miles tall, and punch God in the face, blaspheme and die, falling endlessly, through a sea of fire, until he somehow reached the bottom.
“Who does the hoping, and who does the praying?”
This too was a game. He said something, a sentence with two associated terms, and she split them up. Everytime she had said something witty, she recycled the principle in new variations, whenever she had the chance, but only if she knew he wasn't deliberately setting it up. It had to be her making.
She was weeping now, and she was messing with her hair in an irritable manner, until she yanked off the entire wig and just sat there, baldheaded, desperate.
All the barrels came tumbling down from the waggon, down, down.
He kept his eyes on the road, but put his hand on her thigh. She put both her hands over his.
He wanted to be a pirate that plundered the sea, powerful, lawless, unfettered by noble sentiments, swinging his agile body across bulwarks and cutting, slashing throats with his what do they call it, those sabres?
If it hadn’t been for the fact he was an atheist, he would have thought it was God’s trick on him, because for as long as she lived - as long as there was one breath in her - he would be grateful, patient, on his best behavior.
There was no point of his waking hours, he realized, when he was not praying inside, knowing full well it was futile, leaving all the hoping to her.
She put the wig back on.
“I’m beautiful again”, she said. “Do you still love me?”
“I will always love you”, he said. “You know that, right?”
“I know”, she said, under her breath.
“How do you know?”
“It’s the little things, I guess.”
Skagen is an area in the farthest North of Denmark, originally a fisher community, but famous for colonies of impressionist painters from the late 19th century like P.S. Kröyer, Christian Krohg, Holger Drachmann, Laurits Tuxen and Michael and Anna Ancher. Today it is a popular tourist resort. The light has been compared to that of Key West.