We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [183]
They'd been intimate, but intimacy isn't the same as routine. There was always a spark that glowed.
He missed her.
"Was she beautiful, your Chinese lady?" Klara asked him once, out of the blue. The question startled Albert. He hadn't known that she'd heard the old rumors. He shrugged. He didn't feel like talking about Cheng Sumei with Klara. "Did she have tiny little Chinese feet?"
"No, her feet weren't bound. That was only for the daughters of rich men; poor girls escaped. She provided for herself from a very young age."
Klara stared into the distance. Apparently this piece of information had knocked her off course.
"So she was an orphan?" It was a word she'd avoided when he'd asked about her childhood on Birkholm.
"You could say that."
"So she was all alone in the world," Klara said.
He'd expected more questions, not only about Cheng Sumei's appearance, but also about their feelings for each other. He dreaded the conversation moving into a minefield where each reply might trigger unfavorable comparisons and fits of jealousy. And he knew how he'd have replied: with icy distance in his voice. This was private territory.
Instead, she fell silent. Several days passed before she asked him again. Her questioning now pursued a new direction, as though she'd been thinking something through.
"Was the Chinese lady very rich?" she asked.
He explained that she had become rich by marrying Presser and that she'd carried on his business very successfully after his death.
"She was an independent woman," he said. "A businesswoman."
"All alone in the world," Klara said. "And then she became rich and independent." She spoke thoughtfully, as though this brief account of Cheng Sumei was leading her to a conclusion about herself.
Christmas was coming. For Albert, the holiday was a pretext for postponing the wedding to an as-yet-undecided date in the new year. Christmas had to be got out of the way first. Then they could get married and she could move in with him. She wouldn't be bringing much from Snaregade. Compared to his, her belongings were mostly junk. But perhaps they meant something to her?
He didn't ask, but he noticed that she looked at his home in a new light. She wandered about, assessing things; tentatively, she'd move an armchair or a table—just by a few inches—or shift a sofa when she thought he wasn't looking. But her eyes announced changes that no ruler could measure.
His world stood on the brink of a great upheaval. It was the only world he had left, a reduced kingdom, but still a kingdom, built just as much on habits as on furniture and floor space. Now he'd have to give up those habits too.
The distance between them grew. Every time she mentioned a possible date for their wedding, he made an evasive reply. His reluctance was blatant. He'd given his overall "I do," but it had been followed by a long series of small, unspoken "I don'ts."
When he thought about the moment he'd have to visit Pastor Abildgaard and ask him to read their banns in church, everything inside him cringed. The minister with whom he'd shared so many discussions, the pastor whose duty to call on the bereaved he'd taken over in the dark years of the war because Abildgaard hadn't the strength to take care of his flock as a minister should, the man he'd seen in tears: now Albert would have to stand before him with all his own weaknesses laid bare.
Abildgaard was bound to be ironic, condescending even. He'd undoubtedly have the nerve to play the father figure: oh yes, he'd be unable to resist getting back at him by delivering some lecture to the far older and more experienced man who'd opposed him on countless issues in the past. And