Breathing Into Marble

by Laura Sintija Cerniauskaite

  When did they fall asleep? Liudas switched off the TV and, half asleep in bed, called for Isabel. She sat still on the doorstep of the veranda, fading with the light, or perhaps she was sleeping, or dying, or running? She exhaled; a sound that was barely discernible among the others in the darkness – there was as much left of Isabel at that moment as the sound of the mournful lowing of a cow, which barely managing to ruffle the evening silk.

  There was the scent of apples in the veranda; the apple trees cast silent shadows against the glass door. Not even a slight breeze disturbed the garden. Ilya was barely breathing. At night his smell grew sweeter; Isabel liked it, this smell of a sleeping child. Quietly she bent over him as if bending over a pot of porridge and inhaled, as if she wished to have a spoon of him.

  She knelt close to Ilya, next to this child of whom she knew nothing – disarmed by sleep, his face was barely discernible on the pillow, like an unlocked pantry, the door ajar, an indistinct pale shape in the twilight. She could neither touch nor know him.

  Suddenly Ilya opened his eyes, as he had that time in the orphanage when she had come to take him out after his afternoon sleep.

  Surprised, both blinked and shrank back. Confusion squeezed itself between them like an intruder. But, by holding each other’s gaze, slowly the trust grew.

  ‘Who are you?’ she whispered. ‘What are you to me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ilya said softly and honestly, his eyes wide open, probably for the first time ever.

  ‘Is it bad for you living with us?’

  He thought for a while, as if searching, fearful.

  ‘No…’

  ‘Do you ever think about what would happen if you had to go back to the orphanage?’

  ‘I don’t want to go back.’

  ‘It’s difficult for me with you… I’m totally alone,’ Isabel whispered.

  He seemed to understand. Something shone warm and shyly behind the darkness of his face.

  ‘You need to behave so that you will be allowed to stay – do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Tears ran down their faces. They were not ashamed; it was as if their tears sprang from the same source, a secret glance. They dried their tears immediately, hiding them from any intruder, from any ghostly presence that might appear out of the darkness. Their contours softened and sank, blending like whisked milk and the night enfolded the woman who melted into the child and the child who melted into the woman and each into the other.

  WEDNESDAYS AND Fridays belonged to Liudas. Beatrice would lock herself in her study and get herself ready. But one Monday morning, hearing steps in the corridor, Beatrice listened, startled - the steps were familiar, but sharper and quicker. Their owner approached Beatrice’s office like a bullet aimed at its target.

  Isabel!

  Her ash coloured hair was fastened up haphazardly and her motley, knitted cardigan slipped down over her sleeveless dress – this was how Isabel had been since she was young, always giving the impression that she was a scatterbrain.

  It was as if she still hadn’t learned to comb her hair properly and needed somebody to fasten the buttons of her dress.

  Isabel blew through the door like a draft, and even when the door slammed behind her, the breeze remained in her ruffled hair and cheeks.

  ‘Hi,’ Beatrice said quietly.

  ‘Hi,’ Isabel said.

  She stared at Beatrice as if this were the first time that she was really seeing her.

  Beatrice’s hair was as black and smoky as a witch’s nest. A man would like to kiss it, to lose himself in its capricious curls.

  Beatrice, feeling how Isabel’s glance picked through her hair as if searching for evidence, shook her head and indicated for Isabel to take a seat.

  ‘Yes,’ Isabel murmured, but she didn’t move.

  ‘Well, how are you? How is Ilya?’

  ‘Liudas doesn’t tell you?’

  ‘Liudas… you know… he doesn’t say much.’

  No, she didn’t know. After work he talked a lot. He had always been more talkative than Isabel.

  ‘Isabel…’ said Beatrice, ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Sit down then. Why are you standing up? Would you like a coffee?’

  Beatrice was glad of the opportunity to turn away. Isabel’s gaze did not leave her as she bustled with the coffee cups and saucers and the shining tea spoons which looked like they had been stolen from a doll’s set. Stolen. She fixed her gaze on Beatrice’s bottom and suddenly felt a painful desire, mingled with loathing for those buttocks squeezed into their black tights; the desire of the woman betrayed, who in attempt to torture herself, wants to experience her husband’s pleasures. Beatrice’s feverish movements gave off a pungent aroma and the longer she faced the coffee pot, the more the scent became unbearable, the more painfully the buttocks swelled and looked as if they were smeared with oily juices.

  Isabel flinched at the smell of the coffee.

  A scent can hurt. It can be unbearable. It can torture you until finally you die from exhaustion.

  ‘I won’t have a drink…’ she whispered.

  Slowly Beatrice put the coffee pot on the cupboard. She turned around hesitantly.

  ‘What has happened?’ She said finally. ‘Has Ilya… done something? I told you that he…’

  Isabel felt that if she had a sip of the coffee she would die. She felt that the table was covered with finger prints, that it was contaminating her with foreign memories. She wanted to know what had pressed against its lacquered surface; the prints of body parts, the imprint of whispers, moaning like ghosts, turning into reflections on the dark, lacquered surface.

  ‘Take a seat, for goodness’ sake.’ Beatrice’s patience snapped and Isabel sat obediently on the edge of the chair.

  Isabel’s features seemed to have melted, as if they had been washed away by the current; only a nervous tick tugged still at the corner of her lips. Beatrice knew that she would never allow herself to show that kind of vulnerability in front of Isabel. Not in front of anybody. With a sudden feeling of superiority, she began to pity to her friend. Temporarily emboldened, she braved Isabel’s gaze, toying absently with a white, encrusted gold bracelet on her wrist.

  ‘Nice.’ Isabel had noticed it.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Liudas likes white gold.’

  ‘Oh,’ Beatrice replied coldly. She wanted to turn away. Isabel’s eyes were fixed on the bracelet, as if she were trying to decode a text hidden in the tiny amethysts.

  ‘It doesn’t suit you,’ Isabel said.

  ‘You can have it if you want.’

  ‘Go to hell, Beatrice.’

  ‘Oh, our coffee,’ Beatrice exclaimed naturally, as if she hadn’t heard.

  It was true that she had left the coffee on the table top and it provided a perfect pretext for Beatrice to turn away. She brought the steaming cup over to Isabel, taking her time to find the sugar and then a tea spoon. She felt that something had weakened in Isabel’s gaze; it had slipped away, got lost.

  ‘How can I carry on living?’ Isabel whispered her anger dissipating.

  It was as if she were begging to have her hand held on a fairground ride which was about to shoot her up into the sky incredibly fast.

  ‘Does he love you?’ Isabel asked.

  Beatrice placed the sugar pot on the table and slid the cup of coffee towards Isabel wordlessly.

  And then she jumped - Isabel knocked the cup from the table.

  She’s insane.

  The cup of white coffee pooled on the carpet forming a tiny skull-like shape.

  ‘I said I didn’t want a drink,’ Isabel breathed.

  She jumped up, her hands pressed to her chest as if afraid that the beast encaged within her rib cage would escape. Hastily she ran with it to the door.

  ‘Women are so cruel,’ she said, turning suddenly. ‘Especially former friends.’

  ‘Just stop it… You’re turning into your mother,’ Beatri
ce snapped back.

  Isabel didn’t answer. She closed the door quietly, as if the noise might harm her. Her steps faded down the corridor like the nervous pulse of a weakened heart. Beatrice lit a cigarette. She wanted to call out, but only managed to throw her hands up into the air – her palm thumped down on the table and opened up helplessly.

  She began to cry. She looked down at her polished nails – when she was a child it had been enough to wet them with her saliva and stick chamomile petals on them and she would turn into a princess. Beatrice would always manage to keep them on longer than Isabel – Your saliva is stickier, Isabel would tell her. The velvet petals would peel from Isabel’s first hand while she was sticking them to the other.

  Beatrice gazed at her upturned hands and did not recognise them.

  Her fingers lay half open as if pleading for the strength to pray.

  ILYA WAS not at all surprised when they told him he would have to go back to the orphanage. It seemed as though he had been expecting it all along.

  Isabel persuaded Liudas to call Beatrice and explain everything - but she couldn’t clearly formulate what exactly it was that he should explain. The words scratched around her mind like mad dogs biting each other and then, finally, having failed to find any other escape, they spread through her body in a nervous tremor. Liudas attempted to calm her with his palm, but his touch was as cold as a doctor’s and together with the trembling it killed something more in Isabel.

  ‘I visited Beatrice,’ she said suddenly, unexpectedly - he had only asked her if she knew where the axe was. Liudas froze, standing with his back to her at the little sink on the wall; he might have been washing his hands or perhaps he was just thinking about something.

  ‘So what?’ he muttered. ‘So maybe I don’t need to call her?’

  ‘We didn’t speak about the child.’

  ‘Look, don’t start stressing me, Isabel,’ Liudas snapped back, his voice dry.

  He went out to get the axe. He hadn’t, in fact, been planning to go out when he was standing next to the sink, but now he went. Isabel had no other means of revenge other than to pour out her anger on Liudas’ head. He didn’t protest.

  It was left up to him to think of what to say to Beatrice. He kept postponing the call until it became absurd. When, finally, he managed to dial the number, Isabel’s ears began to ring - they rang terribly. Understandably, Beatrice was annoyed. Isabel turned around and closed herself in the kitchen, just in case she could still hear through the terrible ringing in her ears how Liudas attempted to keep his tone neutral as Beatrice reproached him; she had made concessions for them, they had managed to get her into trouble, she was risking her job and reputation. Isabel, on the other hand, Isabel lacked any kind of responsibility and it might be a good idea for her to be adopted… Liudas managed to cool Beatrice down quite quickly. They made arrangements for the following week. Having put the receiver down, he circled Isabel as if she were a table or a chair, which meant he was still angry and disappointed and not yet sure what his opinion was about it all. Ilya had to be sorted out and it was clear, though left unsaid, that this too would be Liudas’ responsibility. Isabel only gave in about one thing – she agreed to sit with Liudas and not to argue with his decisions.

  The next week Isabel stood among the fir trees, her hands crossed upon her chest – the paleness of her hands shone from a distance among the tree trunks. Liudas, in the yard by his Opel, felt her presence behind his back. Gailius had wanted to go with Liudas and Ilya. He looked unwell and Isabel had been worried that there could be another seizure coming. She had begun to argue with Liudas, but even though Liudas was ready to give in, she suddenly lost any strength for the fight. Just go. Ilya had squeezed himself in the corner between the sink and the cupboards and, with his irises like steel pins, stabbed at Isabel. It seemed to her that he was angry about that night in the veranda when they had cried for each other; it had been a peace offering, a contract of mutual responsibility, irrevocable. Isabel could not hold his gaze. She turned away quickly, pressed her fist to her chest and unravelled, like thread from the spool, towards the woods.

  She didn’t hear the sound of footsteps in the yard, or the movements which had sparked the sounds. She listened to the soothing sigh of the fir trees at the edge of the misty woods; the sigh blew through her mind like a cool wind. And that was it. There were no other thoughts. She imagined being small, as small as the comma shaped ray of sunlight shining through the pine needles onto the moss - but the more she tried to diminish herself, the stronger the pressure grew in her temples. She stared at the quivering arabesque of sunlight in the hope that it would redeem her. She longed to burn, to be consumed, to be released from the necessity of standing like that hearing nothing.

  The yard had grown quiet; no footsteps echoed. Liudas shouted to the children. She didn’t catch the meaning of the words, just the angry scratch of the shouted words frozen in the air; the tone tore at the meaning – and Isabel attempted to turn herself into nothing more than the quivering ray of sunlight. First the car boot slammed, then twice the sound of the doors shutting. Liudas started the engine. She closed her eyes and inhaled.

  That’s all, that’s all. That’s all – the words pulsed in her temples. The car turned out of the yard and faded away into the distance.

  And suddenly, right beside her, as if having slipped past the guards, a high pitched coo-coo. Coo-coo, right at her temple, coo-coo. Time moved into its painful current again. Coo-coo, a storm arose in Isabel’s chest – first her eyes darkened and then suddenly, sharply she fell onto the moss… She leaned back against the trunk of the fir tree. A spasm contracted her to the size of a nut and then suddenly she expanded again and she pulsed like this, within the eternal now of a sob, while an occasional scream struck like lightening. And then she listened to herself – the sob expanded into a long, sharp scream which pierced the beams of sunlight - it was cerulean and fast, it shone like lightening above the woods and it no longer belonged to Isabel; she belonged to it.

  She had not noticed that she had fallen onto the moss. It was warm and soft and familiar. And quiet, and light, and forgave everything. Here the patches of sunlight moved slowly, promising to return, to repeat. Isabel hid her face between her knees and bit into the flesh of her fist.

  Until dusk.

  That night they went to bed late, just the three of them now. First Isabel lay down in the children’s room next to Gailius who was already half sleeping on his back, face towards to door, as if he had been expecting her. When Isabel lay down next to him, he murmured sleepily without opening his eyes.

  ‘Thanks, I don’t need a bed-time story anymore.’

  ‘Are you angry?’ Isabel asked.

  ‘No. Why should I be?’

  ‘Well, for all this…’

  ‘I just find it difficult to understand you,’ Gailius sighed. And turned his head towards the wall.

  They said no more. An exhausted despair spread like poison through her limbs and she closed her eyes. Isabel slept, then woke as if shaken, though nobody had touched her. Next to her, Gailius was breathing deeply and rhythmically. She was flooded with a painful feeling of gentleness; in the moonlight the contour of his jaw shone, his scent was softened by sleep. Since his first seizures, when he had begun taking medication, sleep had covered Gailius like a flag of distress. The scent reminded Isabel of the transience of motherhood and of her own mortality. She wanted to touch the florescent jaw of her son, which looked as sharp as a grave stone. The rest of him was lost in the darkness of the sheets, as if only this frighteningly blue and perfect crescent moon shape was all that was left of her child. She touched it with her finger tips; his skin burnt them with its coldness, perhaps because of the other worldly light. Isabel removed her hand and screamed in her head. From his frozen lips she heard the quiet sound of an asthmatic ch ch ch.

  When she touched him again, everything was back to normal. It left her with a feeling of sorrow, a premonition, the wisp of her imagination,
a heart swelling up somewhere on the shores of consciousness. Gailius sighed in his sleep and she felt, for the thousandth time, that she was losing him. It was like observing him in his agony down at the bottom of a bottomless well. How could she leave him alone under those cold sheets, with the malevolent light from the window stabbing him? She knew Liudas wouldn’t be happy, but she felt like bringing her blanket and laying down next to Gailius, on the other bed which was empty now.

  In her bedroom Isabel sat on the bed in the darkness. She wanted to say something; she felt that Liudas was awake. The house enclosed them like a dark womb, moaning and sobbing, but Liudas’ back was silent. Deliberately silent.

  Suddenly she jumped at the sharp trill of a nightingale – it was so close, as if the bird had landed by her ear drum and stabbed her brain with the hot needle of its song. Startled she suddenly recalled a dream she had had a couple of nights before – Liudas’ face wobbled on the body of a crane, distorted terribly. A beak forced itself out of his face, too large to be that of a bird and at the corners of his eyes two bloody berries coagulated. Isabel was also a bird. They lay, beaks together, in the warmth of a nest made of moss and twigs, close to the water; they were looking into each other’s quivering eyes and plucking at the umbilical cord of despair that joined them – their only pulsing creation. Liudas was determined to destroy the hieroglyph of their two dying bodies, repeatedly lifting his head on his trembling neck. His gaze did not shift from Isabel. His head flopped hopelessly and, as he pecked at the moss, his irises would contract suddenly to the size of the eye of a needle.

  That was the dream.

  Isabel stood up and crossed bare foot to the window. Liudas moved, listening – so he wasn’t sleeping. His thoughts were too loud and too fast and by trying to control them he had exhausted himself and couldn’t sleep.