The Danish Girl
Chapter One
His wife knew first. "Do me a small favor?" Greta called from the bedroom
that first afternoon. "Just help me with something for a little bit?"
"Of course," Einar said, his eyes on the canvas. "Anything at all."
The day was cool, the chill blowing in from the Baltic. They were in
their apartment in the Widow House, Einar, small and not yet thirty-five,
painting from memory a winter scene of the Kattegat Sea. The
black water was white-capped and cruel, the grave of hundreds of fishermen
returning to Copenhagen with their salted catch. The neighbor below
was a sailor, a man with a bullet-shaped head who cursed his wife.
When Einar painted the gray curl of each wave, he imagined the sailor
drowning, a desperate hand raised, his potato-vodka voice still calling
his wife a port whore. It was how Einar knew just how dark to mix his
paints: gray enough to swallow a man like that, to fold over like batter his
sinking growl.
"I'll be out in a minute," said Greta, younger than her husband and
handsome with a wide flat face ... read full excerpt from: The Danish Girl ebook
