Excerpted: The Wax Child

Whenever a woman nearby to me was about to give birth, I would lie in the ground and feel almost exalted, as if the arrival of every child was a chance for me to find a place in the world, for my soul to dart into one of those newborn infants, my mouth to open and expel its very first cry. But I remained there. Whenever a woman nearby was about to give birth, a messenger would make haste to the midwife and whoever else the pregnant woman had asked to help. All let go then of whatever was in their hands, and came as quickly as they could. Some in the night, others in the frost of morning; with fleetness of foot they came, and barely inside the door would take upon them the housekeeping. They would introduce a new and temporary regime, which meant that those who normally frequented the house would have to find new places to stay. I saw these women form a ring around the one in labor and lead her to the bathhouse. I saw them douse the burning-hot rocks with water; I saw the steam and the scalding herbs. They undressed the birthing woman, and the naked one was Anne Bille, the young mistress of Nakkebøll.

And by the stone wall of the bath house they had placed me in the ground, and I lay and listened there as Anne Bille gave birth to the first of her children. And the midwife came then with her long strides, known for her skill of directing into another the pains of the woman in labor, and it would be said then that she who received the pain of the travailing woman held the skin girdle. And the women of the household took turns to hold the skin girdle on Anne Bille’s behalf. And my own mistress, Christenze, could hold it the longest, and it was said then that this was because she had never lain with a man and therefore possessed a virgin’s strength. And later in the morning, Eiler, Anne’s husband, returned to the manor, and he stood and kicked at the gravel outside the stone bath house, and said, I heard it myself, to the midwife, that this was a dreadful racket his wife was making in there, and how much could such a thing hurt, and I saw then the midwife’s eyes narrow, and without him understanding what was happening she gave him the skin girdle to hold and immediately he fell to the ground and cried, O, help me, I feel such terrible pain, and all the women then laughed, Christenze and Ousse and the others too, they shrieked with laughter, and Ousse said: There, she certainly gave you the skin girdle to hold, that you may learn what your woman endures to bring your offspring to the world.

But every time Anne Bille gave birth, no matter who held the skin girdle, the child died in the days that followed. I heard one of them scream as if death had appeared before it, and soon it expired at Anne Bille’s breast, not a single night old. Others were blue and lifeless, too small at birth to survive. Then one day my mistress said to Anne: Anne, I have noticed you are rather unwell. Come to me and I will give you sheep’s milk. You have borne four children, and none is alive. Let me help you to keep the next. And my mistress went and milked a sheep. In the kitchen, she took up some of the milk on a spoon and as she heard Anne approach the door she picked from her pocket, with two fingers, a spider and placed it in the milk so that the attercoppe was concealed in it. She stood with the spoon ready when Anne came in, and obedient-ly Anne went to the spoon, put the spoon without a word into her mouth and swallowed the milk and the spider unknowingly in one gulp, and went on her way. At this time she was eight months pregnant and was full of hope and anxiety, and would accept any advice. And when the child came it was alive and well-formed, with the correct number of toes and fingers, a girl with chubby cheeks, and Anne sat up in her maternity bed and was radiant, a sigh of relief went out, not only over Nakkebølle, but over all of southern Funen—at last a healthy, bouncing baby was given to Anne, and she swaddled the child. But the next morning the newborn lay cold in her cot. It was Ousse who discovered it, and Anne turned away onto her side in the bed with her back to the child and said nothing. I shall let her be, so you can say goodbye, Ousse said, but Anne did not reply, and Ousse went then to the kitchen, for she was a servant girl, to share the solemn news. And there she sat as yet when Anne came bounding with the child. It lives, it lives! she cried, and held the child out for them to see, and Ousse and Anne bent over the newborn and it was true, the face, with its closed eyes, widened and crumpled, the mouth shaped the smallest of movements, and the lips parted slowly as if to expel a tentative sound. There, you see, Ousse! Anne cried. She lives! And the child’s mouth opened and out came not a sound but a spider; and they stood then, as if they were petrified, and gaped at the infant as the spider scuttled across her face and jumped away, and Anne screamed and let go of the child, whose body fell to the stone floor.

And thus some twelve years passed, and before Anne was thirty-two she had given birth to and lost fifteen infants. And with every child that died she became meaner and more bad-tempered, unhappy, abusive, and she would scratch the faces of her servant girls and at dinner would stab her own hand with forks and laugh out loud, and she cast her gaze at Christenze, my mistress, then still younger, though not young, perhaps thirty-six years old, but unmarried, and fond of riding, often at dinner she would still be in riding boots, and Anne scowled then at this ruddy-cheeked, unwed noblewoman and hissed between her teeth: You, ‘tis you, you are a witch. But Christenze merely laughed and rolled her eyes and drank more wine, and there were times when Christenze, my mistress, would think it better if she had been born a man, when still a child the thought had struck her that she possessed that very restlessness and strength; and if ever the chance came her way to gallantly step in and perhaps shield in her arms a servant girl who happened for instance to be frightened by a fierce dog at the moat, then the rest of her day would be spent pondering what Christenze understood were manly values, protecting and shielding, riding and fencing. So Christenze had never ingratiated herself to any potential husband, had never married, never wanted to, never felt an urge for mayor or king’s lieutenant, nor any marital bed, had shunned all notion of prenuptial agreement, bridal veil and marriage chest, preferring to horse-ride on her own and drink red wine and read letters well into the night; the Beheaded Virgin is what she later would call herself—after death, of course—her head, separated from her body, told me so from within the flames, when they tossed both it and the body, headless, onto the fire, Farewell my child, the lips sighed on seeing me on the arm of another in front of the bonfire, and had I been able to cry my eyes would then have cried, and had my mouth been able to shape a word it would then have done so, but I saw her detached head say: Farewell, my child, fare-well from the Beheaded Virgin. However, all this was a long time later. I am anticipating events. Christenze is still alive. It is night, night over southern Funen. She is asleep in her room. She has put me in the basket. The still being of night entwines itself in the treetops. I think I love her with that part of me that is never illuminated.

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