if you already follow me on here, you'll know my main story has been neglected for a shamefully long time, so I wrote this to try and get myself back into a writing frame of mind (plus, I love nyo!dennor and 1920s noir aesthetics) hope you enjoy! I'll try and have the next chapter of my main fic up as soon as possible, and then it'll be back to as-regular-as-possible updates
"I know the voices dying with a dying fall/Beneath the music from a farther room.
So should I then presume?"
-The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufock, T. S. Eliot
Her voice falls like silk over the room, caressing each word as it blossoms forth from crimson-painted lips, flowers of music unfurling as the song goes on. Its singer stands at ease in the centre of the small stage, a clearly assured performer. Solveig takes a long sip of her wine and tries to think of nothing. Certainly not of how the singer's hair spills unbound over her shoulders, so strange for this new era of short hair and short skirts, a honey-blonde wave that is gilded by the low lights of the room. It suits her; Solveig's hand comes up to toy with the ends of her own cropped hair, remembering a time not so long ago when she had longed for such flowing, mermaid-wild locks. She definitely does not notice the precise blue shade of the singer's eyes, like water in a sunlit pool. Warm eyes, and distracted ones. They flit from person to person without pause. As though she is looking for someone. She sips again at her wine, but its warming effect has somewhat worn off.
The song ends, the audience applauds. They clap politely but not raucously; this is a small, tucked-away place, nothing like the cabarets where a performer's wages for the month can be earnt in one night of glory. A blush diffuses through the singer's face as she accepts the applause. Something twists inside Solveig. For god's sake, not again. She keeps her eyes on the singer, watching as she brushes back waves of that sun-golden hair and smoothes down her scarlet dress. A bold colour, but she carries it well.
'We ought to go,' mutters Solveig. Childishly, she regrets it at once- much can come of a smile and a few carefully placed words, the remaining bright parts of her believe. Her brother nods. He understands, at least, how it feels to have a knot twisted so tight inside you that it pulls your common sense in every direction but the correct one. But Emil smothers his confusion in cards and expensive whiskey and all the frivolities that Father's money buys. Emil is twenty-one to her twenty-four, still a boy in all but name, and for now he is happy to indulge his sister's small whims. 'All right.' She slides on her long furred coat, he replaces his hat and gloves. They slide from the room as if nothing, no one in here matters, as though the notes that still hover on the air like birdsong have not dug themselves firmly and utterly into Solveig's mind.
The street welcomes them back with a gust of icy wind and the dry stench of cigarette-ends. Solveig lights one herself as they wait for a taxi to pass by, hands shaking from the cold as she fumbles with the light. A plume of smoke spills from her lips; look at that, she thinks, her nail polish is cracked again, and she can almost hear Mother's voice telling her that she will never be painted and pretty enough-
'Taxi's here,' says Emil. His voice is low and placating- yes, he understands, perhaps a little too well. Solveig stamps out her cigarette and smiles at him, wishing that her gratitudes would pour forth as easily as water, that she was not so tongue-tied and heart-aching. Yes- he understands.
Five years, and she is married well, married brilliantly, to a man who is not so much cold and cordial with her as on a completely different wavelength to her. Dr Berwald Oxenstierna is three or four years her senior (they do not acknowledge each other's birthdays, or indeed much else), a maverick scientist who plied his trade as a university lecturer for several years before turning to the vast mires of research. He is one of the lucky few who managed to wring some fame and fortune out of it all. Now they- now she, Solveig Oxenstierna- are privy to whichever social circles they desire to associate with them, regarded as intelligent and cultured by those who matter. Though everyone is intelligent and cultured these days. Everyone is a poet, a writer, an artist, and even Solveig cannot deny several maudlin afternoon spent doodling when there is a sudden dearth of parties to attend. Her pencil wanders most often towards wheat-golden hair and sky-blue eyes. Dangerous paths to tread, and she tries to remind herself of it daily.
It was exhilarating at first, to be rid of the cloak of Father's name. To walk about as her own woman, under no one's control, free to come and go as she pleased without the weight of being Lord Bondevik's daughter over her head. That exhilaration soured soon enough. Must I always belong to someone else? Her initials are S.O, her name when she signs letters is S. Oxenstierna, she is damned Mrs Oxenstierna in everything, and that in itself is almost worse. At least Bondevik was mine, at least it was not given to me by someone else. This is perhaps why such a chilly wall exists between her and her husband. Berwald can taste her resentment, she knows, longs to analyse it like he might one of his beloved biology studies. No, he does not love her. Love was a word laced in mockery if it was used at all upon the occasion of Solveig's wedding. Father's arm tight around hers, then her hand in Berwald's cold one, a done deal. Surely her life will not always be measured in such small terms.
Now they sit in the doctor's own private box, dressed to the nines for those who care. Solveig's hair- still short, it was one of the few allowances she wrung from Father at the news of her betrothal- is laced with a bandeau of diamonds set in rose gold, so that she sparkles at the slightest turn of the head. Her dress is deep green-blue silk, expensive enough that a thrill of bitter satisfaction runs through her at the thought of the bill Berwald will have to pay for her outfit. Solveig's necklace is sapphire, her theatre cape the softest, darkest mink fur she could find. And again the most expensive. If the good doctor is to begrudge our marriage, let him be justified at least.
'Lady Hedervary commented upon your shoes,' says Berwald. His voice is a little smug, and Solveig braces herself for some sort of clumsily veiled insult. 'She said that flats were- what was it?- not in vogue this year, something like that.' Elizaveta Hedervary reads Vogue magazine as zealously as their mothers read the Bible, Solveig knows, but that is besides the point. Let the petty women squabble over fashion and propriety. Her dear husband's aim is only to humiliate her, and he has made a poor job of it, as usual.
'She said that, did she?' replies Solveig, injecting what she hopes it just the required minimum to sound bothered. Evidently she failed; Berwald's brow furrows, and he raises a finger as though to reprimand her, but it is at that moment that the curtains glide open. And a knife that has sharpened over five lonely years chooses its moment now to drive straight into Solveig's heart.
She wears red again, and it is undeniably, utterly her colour, the deep wine-red shade of the dress bold beneath the spotlight. Solveig fancies that the colour of her eyes is visible from here, bright and blue and surveying the crowd with a critical glint. And her hair- dear god, that damned hair, like sunlight rippled and pounded across pure silver wire.
'What is-'
'Be quiet for once, dear,' she breathes, and her absorption is eye-stingingly painful. An angel's voice soars through the room. It invites her to forget Berwald, to forget that her hands are clasped trembling in her lap, to forget the world outside and hear only her, here, now.
(here is the beginning, the beginning that will break you)
She sings of love, of solitude, of heartache and heartbreak, of happiness and bad choices, everything that this cultured crowd values, and every word is another arrow notched and flying from the bow. Every word cuts. Songs fly by in fluid, dreamlike moments, and the applause they receive is far from adequate for such a spellbinding performance. Solveig manages to forget everything for once. There is only this room, this night, here and now, and she can live for that if she must, I can live for her if I must. The music hovers on the edge of breaking her, like a knife through helpless clouds- and then it comes to a sweeping, soft end. A final note quavers and dies. There is silence- of course there is silence, even those who do not understand are irrevocably captivated. She steps back a little, hands clasping tremulously together. And then a first bravo breaks the air. It is followed by hundreds more, by a standing ovation that is cheered and applauded to such a scale that surely the very roof quakes from its intensity. Shouts rain down from the upper balconies, drive upwards from the main seating and envelop the theatre in sound. She is being plied with flowers, dozens of red roses flung from adoring hands, and still they do not understand. Solveig presses her eyelids just closed. This ache within her is too much, yet still not enough. Will I ever be enough?
'What was her name again?' asks Berwald during the mundane drive home. Solveig's hand reaches into her bag for a programme she never bothered to open. To put a name to the face, the voice that causes her such pain, would be to gather the pain to her and tie it down forever. Wordlessly she hands the velvet-coated card to her husband.
'Maja Andersen,' he reads in a mildly interested voice. 'She's talented.' The tickets were given to them by some family friend, so he owes no attachment to the performance, requires no further thought to appreciate the past three hours in his wife's grudging company. Berwald can forget.
Solveig cannot bring herself to forget. Through the windows that she throws upon each morning, the sky is her eyes, the golden treachery of the ring winking up from her finger is outshone by the golden hair she has dreamt of too often, and in the blackest part of the night, alone in bed, the plain white ceiling above her head is simply another numbing effect against the cruelty of the world. She lives through the constant reminders of her heartache. And sometimes, when Solveig is tired of the parties and the gossip and her husband, which is often, she will sit upon the terrace of their too-big house, smoking, feeling like a pathetic young girl mooning after her first love. No, not love, she reprimands herself. How foolish. The voice in her head is eerily like Mother's.
Dusk finds her alone and happier for it, leant against the rails of the public garden's gates. Smoke drifts in a foul-smelling drift across her face, trailing from the tip of a cigarette she has forgotten to smoke. Solveig stares at the thing and stamps it out in the same second. Truth be told, they disgust her- the smoke dizzies her head- but a cigarette is something to hold, something to still the shaking of her hands. I ought to return home. Berwald will be waiting- no, is there a dinner to attend tonight? She could not recall if her life depended on it. Damn him. Damn his fancy dinners and inane chatter. Twenty-nine. Twenty-nine and utterly drained, utterly devoid of anything but her dreams, her thirtieth birthday a glare in the eyes of youth. Because after thirty, forty comes round quickly enough, and with forty there should be stability, purpose, this is my life and this is why I live it. Such a feeling is, and it always will be, you silly girl, alien to her.
She sets off down the street, perhaps in the wrong direction. Whichever way the wind propels her. Berwald was right- heeled shoes are better, better for the stabbing pain they erupt in her ankles, a welcome distraction from anything and everything. Someone collides with her arm.
'Sorry,' Solveig mutters, knowing that her gaze has been fixated upon the floor for at least half an hour.
'No, it's all right.' Her head snaps up in surprise; she had expected it to be a man, some stern and pompous fool who no doubt disapproved of women walking the streets unaccompanied. Instead, eyes of a warm and liberating blue lock onto hers. And she is free. The weight of resignation lifts from her shoulders, and she gapes without shame, a shiver crawling up her neck.
'You're- you're the singer-' The other woman's face pinks a little and she glances away. 'I saw your performance the other day,' Solveig continues limply. 'You- it was very good. Very.'
'Thank you.' They stand, unspeaking, a door to conversation open in front of them that should never have existed.
'Oh- I'm Solveig,' she says just before the silence stagnates, remembering her manners.
'Maja.' Maja's hand is warm in hers, and her name is all the clearer coming from its owner's mouth, like live music compared to a record. 'I must say, I was lucky to have met you just now,' she says suddenly. 'This city is so large- I had wanted to find somewhere to sit quietly and perhaps have a drink, but I managed to get lost somehow.' She has a meticulous, almost endearingly descriptive way of speaking, as though every word is important.
'I can show you somewhere, if you'd like?' Maja smiles at her, shy all of a sudden, and they set off together. The casual brush of her arm against Solveig's is like the collision of two worlds- of a sun and a moon, different beyond anything or anyone else. They stop at a bar that Solveig likes, where the music is gentle and the drinks softly numbing. Not so tonight. Every sip she takes invigorates her, gives her the courage to hold Maja's gaze and dare not to let go. They speak of singing at first. How Maja is a different person when she ascends the stage, queen of the night with none to challenge for her throne, the shine it lends her. Of how Solveig can barely hold a tune- but I would listen to her voice forever if I could, let it sink into my bones and wash away those hard parts of me.
'My husband said that you were exceedingly good,' she slips out, meaning only to offer praise. The shadow across Maja's face is a beam of hope and a knife in her side at the same time.
'You are married?' She takes a metaphorical step back- sips steadily at her gin and tonic, tears her eyes away from Solveig's. Solveig's hand comes up to cover her ring.
'For nearly three years now.' It comes out as a whisper, because her throat is raw, her eyes stinging, from the pure stupidity of her own voice.
'And- and does he matter?' Is he important to you? Do you share your life with him, are your secrets and hopes and dreams as one? She knows what Maja asks. And it is deliciously, soul-searingly bittersweet.
'He does not matter.'
(and here is the middle- it is not so bad, not so bad yet)
She finds that Maja's hair is thicker than it looks, a warm weight spilling through her hands, sweet-smelling and soft. She finds that the pale blue of her eyes can darken and deepen with the right choice of words, that the slightest brush of skin on skin melts her like candle wax. Solveig discovers more than she could ever have imagined possible in one stolen night, locked away behind the safety of Maja's five-star hotel suite door. Later- much later- morning creeps up on them and casts its glow across the world.
'When can I see you again?' A voice of honey and silk snatches her attention away from the view at the window. Solveig's customary cigarette at daybreak is nowhere to be seen; her hands hang together quite comfortably, the breeze on her face free and fresh. She turns back towards Maja, an unfamiliar warmth within her.
'When do you next want to see me?'
Next week is almost too soon for something they have fallen headfirst into, and far too late for Solveig's serenity to last. She steps into the Oxenstierna household like a stranger, coat hanging from one arm, her hair tousled by another woman's fingers. Berwald's scrutiny cuts straight through her like a blade of ice.
'You swore on our wedding day to always be loyal to me,' is his opening line, a careful but inexplicably childish build-up to what is certain to be an outburst of meaningless rage. 'Did you not?' The yes falls from her lips from fatigue rather than compliance. 'So why, then, when we are invited to Professor Beilschmidt's for dinner, a man who might have handed promotion to me on a platter, do you fail to so much as appear in this very house?' Because I was off finding in someone else what you cannot give me.
'Why do you care?' It is her turn to be childish now. But Solveig cares little for her brazen response, nor for the curling of Berwald's fists at his sides. He will not strike her; he considers himself above such meniality, but still stoops to referencing vows that mean nothing to either of them. 'Our marriage is a sham- you know it, I know it, every guest at the damned thing with an ounce of sense knows that it is so!'
'Then why do you stay?' Damn him. Ever the scientist, he has dissected directly to the sharpest part of her dilemma, the unspoken question that now has an answer.
'Why indeed.' Solveig lets her coat slide to the ground, his money, not mine, and ascends the stairs to her spinster's lonely bedroom.
Inside are the possessions of a married woman- sensible clothes that are expensive without being ostentatious, plain but costly jewellery, a hundred other items of class and wealth that belong to Mrs Oxenstierna. Not to me. Not as I wish to be. Solveig longs to run. To glide glacially past him through the door, the riches he bought her in tow, a free woman whose worth is measured by something, anything other than the men in her life. Instead her body betrays her, decides to fall limply upon the bed. One night, a glorious, perfect night, has embittered her further than she thought possible. She will not leave. She will sleep here as she is, will rise tomorrow and don fresh clothes, will throw open the windows and sit, cigarette spewing smoke, thinking upon a precious few hours when she believed she was free. She will continue her (not) life as it was.
Every week she sees Maja; every week a seed of hope blooms in Solveig's heart, and she exists off that for a time. They have dropped into a routine that never bores, a routine of shy smiles that become words of love, whispered across bare skin as soon as the day decides it shall be so. Until today. When Solveig glances askance at her calendar, counting how many days it is to hers and Maja's next meeting, and sees a date circled in messy red. Her birthday. You silly girl. You'll settle down, of course you will, you'll learn to tolerate Berwald, you'll live together happily enough. Forget her. For she will be thirty in a mere four days' time. The thought of it is bleak- thirty, so old, so distant to the child in her, the age of wise women, women of the world. Thirty. Something in her breaks- is remade, tempered in more bittersweet tears.
'Maja,' she gasps as soon as they are alone. Solveig has pondered it for hours. How she is to break it to Maja, that their beautiful days and nights together will be sobered by age, how the transition between youth and middle age will force them far apart. 'Maja- it is my birthday this Saturday.' The other woman's brows wrinkle in confusion at Solveig's distressed tones. She loops their hands together, unconsciously comforting, something Solveig admires and envies in equal measures.
'Well- you should have told me! We can make an occasion of it, I have a friend who bakes cakes-'
'No, you-' You don't understand. 'I am to be thirty. Thirty years old.' The words fall bleak and stark upon the air. Somewhere, oblivious, a bird screeches above the city and is silenced by the hum of car motors. Maja's face twists a little, for they have both read four dozen poems that lament the terrible passage of three decades in a person, four dozen poems penned by heartsick children still safely ensconced in their early twenties.
'You do not have to dread it,' she says gently. 'It's a number, a marker. It doesn't define you- at least, that's what my-' Solveig captures her words in a kiss. I love you, I love you, she thinks and feels in her mind, she loves this girl who is so unknowingly right every time she speaks, can spin a black mood in the shortest of seconds.
'I love you.' Maja's eyes fly wide open. She blinks once, twice, three times. Silence beats at the air with heavy wings. Solveig's heart is a death knell, an ending for something. Something.
'I-I love you.' Perhaps this is all she has ever needed, all she has ever wanted. It will never heal her. But Solveig's smile no longer tastes bitter to her own mouth.
(the ending now, better and worse than she'd imagined)
They see thirty through safely enough; forty passes with but a few tears. Fifty comes with grey hair and faces that show the decades they have lived. Maja's golden fall is marked here and there by silver, as though a sliver of the moon has entered her, and still she refuses to cut it (Solveig is secretly glad). Sixty. Seventy. Berwald mumbles his last and dies. To her surprise, Solveig weeps at the funeral. It might be the letter of diagnosis stuffed into one pocket, courtesy of too many cigarettes to numb her pain, or simply the end of a man who she never managed to see eye to eye with. A man whose ring is now stowed away in her jewellery box. One of her nieces can have it, she supposes. And somehow they see eighty together.
'Play the record.' Her last minutes, she thinks (knows).
'Which one?'
'You know the one.' An angel's voice soars through the room of machines and dying whines- she is free again, she sees them as they were, bright and broken and beautiful. And now no more.
thoughts?