by Paula Guran
He takes my hand. I let him. It is the first human touch other than the doctors and I don’t feel like they count, since the night when it happened. It feels strange to be touched. I can feel his pulse, his heat. It feels good and strange. Not bad. I just ain’t sure how long I will let it continue.
We watch the egg tremble and crack and I feel like I am standing at the edge of something big, like the white in my dreams. Everything is here now. All my life. All my love. What comes out of that egg will make me either drown in the white or fly out of it. I wanta fly out of it but I ain’t got the strength to do anything about it.
That’s when I see a tiny fist.
I pull my hand away from him and cover my mouth. No wings, I pray, please.
A violet eye!
I am standing so still in case if I move we fall into a different reality.
No beak, I think, and just then, like the world was made of what we want, I see the mouth and I start to laugh but I stop because some more eggshell falls off and a second mouth appears right beside the first one and I don’t know what that’s all about.
Please, I think, please.
I didn’t know what to think. I’ve been pretty ambivalent about the whole egg thing to be honest. I mean, I only sat on it for her. But as soon as it started hatching I felt excited and then kind of nervous. Like, what’s happening here? Are we going to have a baby bird? How do I feel about that? I didn’t even think about it when I reached over and took her hand. I just did it like we hadn’t been having all this trouble and then I realized we were holding hands and I was so happy about that, it distracted me from the egg for a minute.
I think we were both relieved to see the little fist. Of course, I knew we weren’t in the clear yet. I mean it was very possible that we were hatching some kind of feathered human, or some such combination.
Could I love the baby? Yes, this thought occurred to me. Could I love this baby from this horrible act? To be honest, I didn’t know if I could.
She pulled her hand away. I ached for her immediately. We saw an eye, violet, just like hers, and I thought I could definitely love the baby if it looked like her and then we saw the mouth, and after a moment, another mouth and I thought FREAK. I know I shouldn’t have thought it, but I did. I thought, we are going to have this freak for a child.
All these images flashed through my mind of me carrying around this two-mouthed baby, of it growing feathers during puberty, long talks about inner beauty. I had it all figured out. That’s when I knew. Even if it had two mouths and feathers, I could love this kid.
I looked at Leda. It was like something momentous had happened to me and she didn’t even realize it. She stood there in that old blue terry cloth robe, with the coffee stains down the front, her hair all a tangle, her violet eyes circled in fright, her face creased with lines, her hands in fists near her mouth and I wanted to tell her, “Sh, don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right. It doesn’t matter how it looks.” But I didn’t say anything because I also finally realized I wasn’t going to teach her anything about love. Not Leda, who carried this thing, and laid it, and took it away from all those cold and curious doctors and brought it home and sat on it and let her own beauty go untended so she could tend to it. I have nothing to teach her. I have much to learn.
Then I knowed what was happening. When the egg really started to fall apart. Two mouths. Four fists. Four legs. Two heads. And, thank god, two separate beautiful perfect little girl bodies. Two babies, exhausted and crying. I walked over to them and kneeled down beside them and then I just brushed the eggshell off and that gooey stuff and one of them had violet eyes, and the other looks like my husband I realized that on that night I got pregnant twice. Once by my husband and once by that swan and both babies are beautiful in their own way though I gotta admit the one that looks kind of like me, from before this all happened, will probably grow to be the greater beauty, and for this reason I hold her a little tighter, ’cause I know how hard it can be to be beautiful.
My husband bends over and helps brush the eggshell and gooey stuff off and we carry the babies to the couch and I lay down with them and untie my robe and I can hear my husband gasp, whether for pleasure or sorrow I don’t know. My body has changed so much. I lay there, one baby at each breast sucking.
Oh Leda, will you ever forgive me? Will you trust me with our girls? Will I fail them too? Is this what love means? The horrible burden of the damage we do to each other? If only I could have loved you perfectly. Like a god, instead of a human. Forgive me. Let me love you and the children. Please.
She smiles for the first time in months, yawns and closes those beautiful eyes, then opens them wide, a frightened expression on her face. She looks at me, but I’m not sure she sees me, and she says, “swan” or was it “swine”? I can’t be sure. I am only certain that I love her, that I will always love her. Leda. Always, always Leda. In your terry cloth robe with coffee stains, while the girls nap and you do too, the sun bright on the lines of your face; as you walk to the garden, careful and unsure; as you weed around the roses, Leda, I will always love you, Leda in the dirt, Leda in the sun, Leda shading her eyes and looking up at the horrible memory of what was done to you, always Leda, always.
“CHIVALRY”
NEIL GAIMAN
Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail; it was under a fur coat.
Every Thursday afternoon Mrs. Whitaker walked down to the post office to collect her pension, even though her legs were no longer what they were, and on the way back home she would stop in at the Oxfam Shop and buy herself a little something.
The Oxfam Shop sold old clothes, knickknacks, oddments, bits and bobs, and large quantities of old paperbacks, all of them donations: secondhand flotsam, often the house clearances of the dead. All the profits went to charity.
The shop was staffed by volunteers. The volunteer on duty this afternoon was Marie, seventeen, slightly overweight, and dressed in a baggy mauve jumper that looked like she had bought it from the shop.
Marie sat by the till with a copy of Modern Woman magazine, filling out a “Reveal Your Hidden Personality” questionnaire. Every now and then, she’d flip to the back of the magazine and check the relative points assigned to an A), B), or C) answer before making up her mind how she’d respond to the question.
Mrs. Whitaker puttered around the shop.
They still hadn’t sold the stuffed cobra, she noted. It had been there for six months now, gathering dust, glass eyes gazing balefully at the clothes racks and the cabinet filled with chipped porcelain and chewed toys.
Mrs. Whitaker patted its head as she went past.
She picked out a couple of Mills & Boon novels from a bookshelf—Her Thundering Soul and Her Turbulent Heart, a shilling each—and gave careful consideration to the empty bottle of Mateus Rosé with a decorative lamp-shade on it before deciding she really didn’t have anywhere to put it.
She moved a rather threadbare fur coat, which smelled badly of mothballs. Underneath it was a walking stick and a water-stained copy of Romance and Legend of Chivalry by A. R. Hope Moncrieff, priced at five pence. Next to the book, on its side, was the Holy Grail. It had a little round paper sticker on the base, and written on it, in felt pen, was the price: 30p.
Mrs. Whitaker picked up the dusty silver goblet and appraised it through her thick spectacles.
“This is nice,” she called to Marie.
Marie shrugged. “It’d look nice on the mantelpiece.”
Marie shrugged again.
Mrs. Whitaker gave fifty pence to Marie, who gave her ten pence change and a brown paper bag to put the books and the Holy Grail in. Then she went next door to the butcher’s and bought herself a nice piece of liver. Then she went home.
The inside of the goblet was thickly coated with a brownish-red dust. Mrs. Whitaker washed it out with great care, then left it to soak for an hour in warm water with a dash of vinegar added.
Then she polished it with metal polish until it gleamed, and she put
it on the mantelpiece in her parlor, where it sat between a small soulful china basset hound and a photograph of her late husband, Henry, on the beach at Frinton in 1953.
She had been right: It did look nice.
For dinner that evening she had the liver fried in breadcrumbs with onions. It was very nice.
The next morning was Friday; on alternate Fridays Mrs. Whitaker and Mrs. Greenberg would visit each other. Today it was Mrs. Green-berg’s turn to visit Mrs. Whitaker. They sat in the parlor and ate macaroons and drank tea. Mrs. Whitaker took one sugar in her tea, but Mrs. Greenberg took sweetener, which she always carried in her handbag in a small plastic container.
“That’s nice,” said Mrs. Greenberg, pointing to the Grail. “What is it?”
“It’s the Holy Grail,” said Mrs. Whitaker. “It’s the cup that Jesus drunk out of at the Last Supper. Later, at the Crucifixion, it caught His precious blood when the centurion’s spear pierced His side.”
Mrs. Greenberg sniffed. She was small and Jewish and didn’t hold with unsanitary things. “I wouldn’t know about that,” she said, “but it’s very nice. Our Myron got one just like that when he won the swimming tournament, only it’s got his name on the side.”
“Is he still with that nice girl? The hairdresser?”
“Bernice? Oh yes. They’re thinking of getting engaged,” said Mrs. Greenberg.
“That’s nice,” said Mrs. Whitaker. She took another macaroon.
Mrs. Greenberg baked her own macaroons and brought them over every alternate Friday: small sweet light brown biscuits with almonds on top.
They talked about Myron and Bernice, and Mrs. Whitaker’s nephew Ronald (she had had no children), and about their friend Mrs. Perkins who was in hospital with her hip, poor dear.
At midday Mrs. Greenberg went home, and Mrs. Whitaker made herself cheese on toast for lunch, and after lunch Mrs. Whitaker took her pills; the white and the red and two little orange ones.
The doorbell rang.
Mrs. Whitaker answered the door. It was a young man with shoulder-length hair so fair it was almost white, wearing gleaming silver armor, with a white surcoat.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” said Mrs. Whitaker.
“I’m on a quest,” he said.
“That’s nice,” said Mrs. Whitaker, noncommittally.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
Mrs. Whitaker shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t think so,” she said.
“I’m on a quest for the Holy Grail,” the young man said. “Is it here?”
“Have you got any identification?” Mrs. Whitaker asked. She knew that it was unwise to let unidentified strangers into your home when you were elderly and living on your own. Handbags get emptied, and worse than that.
The young man went back down the garden path. His horse, a huge gray charger, big as a shire-horse, its head high and its eyes intelligent, was tethered to Mrs. Whitaker’s garden gate. The knight fumbled in the saddlebag and returned with a scroll.
It was signed by Arthur, King of All Britons, and charged all persons of whatever rank or station to know that here was Galaad, Knight of the Table Round, and that he was on a Right High and Noble Quest. There was a drawing of the young man below that. It wasn’t a bad likeness.
Mrs. Whitaker nodded. She had been expecting a little card with a photograph on it, but this was far more impressive.
“I suppose you had better come in,” she said.
They went into her kitchen. She made Galaad a cup of tea, then she took him into the parlor.
Galaad saw the Grail on her mantelpiece, and dropped to one knee. He put down the teacup carefully on the russet carpet. A shaft of light came through the net curtains and painted his awed face with golden sunlight and turned his hair into a silver halo.
“It is truly the Sangrail,” he said, very quietly. He blinked his pale blue eyes three times, very fast, as if he were blinking back tears.
He lowered his head as if in silent prayer.
Galaad stood up again and turned to Mrs. Whitaker. “Gracious lady, keeper of the Holy of Holies, let me now depart this place with the Blessed Chalice, that my journeyings may be ended and my geas fulfilled.”
“Sorry?” said Mrs. Whitaker.
Galaad walked over to her and took her old hands in his. “My quest is over,” he told her. “The Sangrail is finally within my reach.”
Mrs. Whitaker pursed her lips. “Can you pick your teacup and saucer up, please?” she said.
Galaad picked up his teacup apologetically. “No. I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Whitaker. “I rather like it there. It’s just right, between the dog and the photograph of my Henry.”
“Is it gold you need? Is that it? Lady, I can bring you gold . . .”
“No,” said Mrs. Whitaker. “I don’t want any gold thank you. I’m simply not interested.”
She ushered Galaad to the front door. “Nice to meet you,” she said.
His horse was leaning its head over her garden fence, nibbling her gladioli. Several of the neighborhood children were standing on the pavement, watching it.
Galaad took some sugar lumps from the saddlebag and showed the braver of the children how to feed the horse, their hands held flat. The children giggled. One of the older girls stroked the horse’s nose.
Galaad swung himself up onto the horse in one fluid movement. Then the horse and the knight trotted off down Hawthorne Crescent.
Mrs. Whitaker watched them until they were out of sight, then sighed and went back inside.
The weekend was quiet.
On Saturday Mrs. Whitaker took the bus into Maresfield to visit her nephew Ronald, his wife Euphonia, and their daughters, Clarissa and Dillian. She took them a currant cake she had baked herself.
On Sunday morning Mrs. Whitaker went to church. Her local church was St. James the Less, which was a little more “Don’t think of this as a church, think of it as a place where like-minded friends hang out and are joyful” than Mrs. Whitaker felt entirely comfortable with, but she liked the vicar, the Reverend Bartholomew, when he wasn’t actually playing the guitar.
After the service, she thought about mentioning to him that she had the Holy Grail in her front parlor, but decided against it.
On Monday morning Mrs. Whitaker was working in the back garden. She had a small herb garden she was extremely proud of: dill, vervain, mint, rosemary, thyme, and a wild expanse of parsley. She was down on her knees, wearing thick green gardening gloves, weeding, and picking out slugs and putting them in a plastic bag.
Mrs. Whitaker was very tenderhearted when it came to slugs. She would take them down to the back of her garden, which bordered on the railway line, and throw them over the fence.
She cut some parsley for the salad. There was a cough behind her. Galaad stood there, tall and beautiful, his armor glinting in the morning sun. In his arms he held a long package, wrapped in oiled leather.
“I’m back,” he said.
“Hello,” said Mrs. Whitaker. She stood up, rather slowly, and took off her gardening gloves. “Well,” she said, “now you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful.”
She gave him the plastic bag full of slugs and told him to tip the slugs out over the back of the fence.
He did.
Then they went into the kitchen.
“Tea? Or lemonade?” she asked.
“Whatever you’re having,” Galaad said.
Mrs. Whitaker took a jug of her homemade lemonade from the fridge and sent Galaad outside to pick a sprig of mint.
She selected two tall glasses. She washed the mint carefully and put a few leaves in each glass, then poured the lemonade.
“Is your horse outside?” she asked.
“Oh yes. His name is Grizzel.”
“And you’ve come a long way, I suppose.”
“A very long way.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Whitaker. She took a blue plastic basin from under the sink and half-filled it with water. Gal
aad took it out to Grizzel. He waited while the horse drank and brought the empty basin back to Mrs. Whitaker.
“Now,” she said, “I suppose you’re still after the Grail.”
“Aye, still do I seek the Sangrail,” he said. He picked up the leather package from the floor, put it down on her tablecloth and unwrapped it. “For it, I offer you this.”
It was a sword, its blade almost four feet long. There were words and symbols traced elegantly along the length of the blade. The hilt was worked in silver and gold, and a large jewel was set in the pommel.
“It’s very nice,” said Mrs. Whitaker, doubtfully.
“This,” said Galaad, “is the sword Balmung, forged by Wayland Smith in the dawn times. Its twin is Flamberge. Who wears it is unconquerable in war, and invincible in battle. Who wears it is incapable of a cowardly act or an ignoble one. Set in its pommel is the sardonynx Bircone, which protects its possessor from poison slipped into wine or ale, and from the treachery of friends.”
Mrs. Whitaker peered at the sword. “It must be very sharp,” she said, after a while.
“It can slice a falling hair in twain. Nay, it could slice a sunbeam,” said Galaad proudly.
“Well, then, maybe you ought to put it away,” said Mrs. Whitaker.
“Don’t you want it?” Galaad seemed disappointed.
“No, thank you,” said Mrs. Whitaker. It occurred to her that her late husband, Henry, would have quite liked it. He would have hung it on the wall in his study next to the stuffed carp he had caught in Scotland, and pointed it out to visitors.
Galaad rewrapped the oiled leather around the sword Balmung and tied it up with white cord.
He sat there, disconsolate.
Mrs. Whitaker made him some cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches for the journey back and wrapped them in greaseproof paper. She gave him an apple for Grizzel. He seemed very pleased with both gifts.
She waved them both good-bye.
That afternoon she took the bus down to the hospital to see Mrs. Perkins, who was still in with her hip, poor love. Mrs. Whitaker took her some homemade fruitcake, although she had left out the walnuts from the recipe, because Mrs. Perkins’s teeth weren’t what they used to be.