“What will happen to the townspeople?” I asked the Matronit.
They will wake tomorrow to find the sun blotted out, the sky replaced by a ceiling of thorns, and no way out of the eternal night their town has become. The sun will not shine. The crops will fail. No traders will be able to penetrate the thorns. They will starve.
I watched for a while longer and found myself troubled. I could not shake from my mind the memory of the grin the little boy had given me on my first day in Dornburg. Apparently I had some pity, some compassion after all.
“Is this just?” I asked. “To destroy the lives of children for what their elders have done before they were born?”
The vines paused in their growth.
Do you question me?
“I do,” I said. “Children are powerless. Is this divine retribution, to murder the helpless? I do not wish it. Matronit, you should not do this.”
The Matronit was silent. And then—Very well. I will spare the children. You may take them away to safety.
I remembered an old story, of a man in a many-colored suit leading away the children of Hamelin. But is this what I wanted? To take charge of a town’s worth of children who by the age of six were already playing at killing my people?
“No,” I said. “What you suggest is impossible. How should I do such a thing? And is it mercy to take children from the only love they have ever known, to make them wander the earth without family? Without home? Is this kindness?”
What do you suggest? The Matronit did not seem pleased with me.
I thought again, looking at the thorn-vines. “I know another story,” I said. “Of a princess asleep in a tower, and a forest of thorns sprung up around her.”
And this is your vengeance? asked the Matronit. Sleep for a hundred years? They will sleep and wake and your people will still be suffering.
“No,” I agreed. “A hundred years will not suffice. But … let them sleep … let them sleep…” I thought of what the Matronit had shown me of the future. “Let them sleep until their loathing for my people, Matronit, for your children, is only a curiosity, an absurdity, a poor joke. Let them sleep until they are only antiquities, laughingstocks. Let them sleep until Hesse—and all the lands that surround it—are safe for the Jews.”
The Matronit was silent once more.
“Will that suffice?” I prodded her.
That will be a long time, my daughter.
“Yes,” I agreed.
That … will suffice. They will sleep until realms of this land—all this land, all Europe—are safe for the Jews. And you are satisfied? This is different enough from death?
I struggled to explain. “If they do not wake … if they cannot wake … it will be only their fellows in hatred who are to blame. Not I.”
I stroked Eva’s head, noticing the darkness growing in at the roots of her hair. “Will you guide us, Matronit? Will you guide my footsteps?”
I will guide you. I will guide you to Worms, where you will see and speak with your uncle Leyb and Elias, and then you shall take them with you to London.
“London?” I asked, surprised.
London is open to my children once again. And there will be no pogroms there, not in your lifetime. Nor your daughter’s. Nor your daughter’s children’s, and their children’s after them. I will guide you to London, and then I must depart. But you will keep my rites, daughter. Keep my rites.
“Yes,” I agreed. “I will keep your rites.”
* * *
I stood outside those walls with Eva bound to my chest, my old dolly tucked in next to her, and I carried my pack, which contained only those things I brought with me—I no more steal than my father did—and some of Eva’s necessary items. She was sleeping peacefully, and I could feel the damp warmth of her breath against my neck. No feeling has ever given me greater pleasure.
The vines of thorns had almost reached the top of the town walls when I turned and did what my father had not been allowed to do. I walked away from Dornburg.
HOW TO BRING SOMEONE BACK FROM THE DEAD
1. PAIN
It hurts to come back from the dead. And it hurts to bring someone back from the dead.
2. THE JOURNEY
There is always a journey and it is often long. You will have to take the path of pins and the path of needles. You will walk on the pins and your feet will bleed. You will walk on the needles and your feet will bleed, red like your jacket (You must always wear bright colors when you go to the underworld). This is your body mourning. It hurts to bring someone back from the dead.
You will need to be brave and to go into the woods. It is dark and cold, close and damp. You will be there for a long time. You will be on foot. By the time you come out, flashing lights and bright colors will confuse you. You will not be able to respond to them. Your open eyes will not focus, and you will not remember how to turn your head. You will long for the woods and you will not understand how to leave, how to be in the world outside of the woods. The woods will be the only real place. That is why you must bring bright colors with you—dressing all in black is a mistake. You will carry a torch in each hand as you search. Your feet will bleed. If the dead drink the blood, they will be able to speak to you, but they will not come back with you. Be careful. Do not let the person you want to bring back drink your blood.
You will travel for a long time, holding your two torches. You must not stray from the path and you must not pick the flowers. You may ask for help. You will ask the sun for direction and you will ask the moon. Neither will help you; the moon is not able and the sun is not willing. Triple Hecate will have heard screaming and she will tell you where. You may ask an old woman who sits by the path mumbling to herself. If you walk by without a word she will reveal herself to be a witch and eat you in two bites, but if you ask her for help and offer to share an apple with her, she will give you guidance. Do not throw stones at ravens. You may ask wolves for help, but you should not believe what they tell you. They do not think carefully. They do not think as we do.
You will travel a long ways in the dark. Perhaps you will have to make your way through thorns and brambles. The thorns will rip your skin and lay the delicate, palpating network of your veins exposed to the cold wind. You may be caught and the thorns will reach over to block out the sky. All you will be able to see will be the walls of thorns and you will forget that you even knew anything else. The world will become patterns of thorns, patterns whose repetitions you’d counted and memorized years ago and never thought you’d have to see again. You will not want to leave; nothing outside of the thorns will seem real. Perhaps the thorns will take out your eyes and you will not see anything at all.
You will eat roots. Eventually you will eat stones.
3. JOURNEY’S END
You will finally find your beloved. She will be chained in outer darkness wailing for you in her sleep. She will be covered with dust and cobwebs. She will be surrounded by others sleeping like she sleeps. Or perhaps she will be in a clearing, behind glass like a dead duck in the window of a Chinese restaurant. She will shine like a roasted duck as well. She will be surrounded by little men muttering little words. You will not hear them.
Perhaps the men will be wearing white coats. The shine comes from the sweat on her skin as her fever climbs. She is having no dreams.
Will you recognize her? Her face will be porridge, too hot and too pale, slumped like snow on a fallen scaffolding. Her hair will be pulled back. There will be pallid fluorescent lights and no color on the beige walls. The floors will be in washed-out squares like the floor of your high school. Her high school, too. You will sit down next to her and take her hand. She is not there. You can see her. You can touch her. You can smell her. But she is not there. Her chin is hanging in a very peculiar way.
Her eyes are too big and so are her teeth. She is bleeding. She is dying, Egypt, dying. She is dead. She is in chains, long whisper-thin chains. They are as slender as the skein of wool you have unwound as you walked.
<
br /> Did I not mention the skein of wool?
Do not forget the wool. It is your memories, your time.
The chains are not silver. They are not metal. They do not make a clinkety-clankety clattering noise.
They are pale and fuzzy. They are colorless. They look like dust bunnies stretched out, like gray hairs knit together by dead skin. There are so many of them, they cover your beloved completely and hide her face. She cannot breathe. The dust is in her throat and she cannot breathe.
4. YOUR BELOVED
She is one of many and you cannot find her. You cannot recognize her. Also, you are exhausted. You have come such a long way already.
You will always know her. She is young and she has long blond hair. She is young and she has cherry-red lips and hair black as the raven’s wing. She is old, so old that she is dead, with short white hair almost all fallen out.
She has hair like yours, short and coarse, dark and curly. She wears cat’s-eye glasses. She is shorter than you are. She has a mole in the center of her neck and a scar on her right temple from a cat’s scratch.
Cats are never up to any good.
Her fingers are swollen. Her tongue is swollen and chapped, and it has been bleeding.
She has a short tongue.
She is young enough to be your daughter.
She is your daughter.
She is only bones.
Her fingers are swollen. Her rings don’t fit anymore.
He looks like you, a warrior-king. Lean. Muscles. Scars.
She looks just like you, only she is dead.
5. WHAT YOU WILL DO
You will kiss her. Everybody knows that.
6. WHAT ELSE
You will kiss her.
You will jar her or perform the Heimlich maneuver. She might be choking on an apple or some pomegranate seeds or maybe a plastic tube. Help her.
Play music. Play her favorite song on your wonder horn. Play a wild tearing song. Play a love song. Play sixty-nine.
Draw the needle out of her arm with your lips. Stop the blood with your mouth. The tube and the needle are not helping anymore. And she hates them.
It will hurt. Paint your face now, so that you look like a warrior. There will be snakes crawling beneath your skin. You will vomit from the pain, and because it is disgusting to be filled with snakes.
Lower the guardrail at the side of her bed. Check her hair for poisoned combs. Unsnap the shoulder of her gown.
Lie down next to her very carefully. Wrap your arms around her. She will not hug you back. Rest your head on her shoulder. You will have to go to where she is. Close your eyes. It might hurt. It will hurt.
You can cry. It won’t help.
7. AFTERWARD
She will turn her head and look at you. Call her name. She will recognize you and smile. She is so tired. And she hurts. She hurts so much. She is confused. She doesn’t know where she is. She won’t thank you. She will blink and sit up.
Take her by the hand. Hold her tightly.
Give her one of your torches.
Don’t worry if she doesn’t talk at first. Voices take a long time to come back. And anyway, her throat hurts from the tube. Or the apple. The pomegranate. Whatever.
Lead her out. Don’t look back.
8. HOW TO BRING SOMEONE BACK FROM THE DEAD
There is no way to bring someone back from the dead. But you will make the journey anyway.
ALICE: A FANTASIA
1. INA FIRST
For it’s very easy to forget Elsie, eldest of the treacle sisters, as she sits at the bottom of the well and waits to come up, but it was she who met Uncle D. first, after all, and she who first took tea with him back when her sisters were all too young—babies, really—for such a treat, and it should be easy to see how she should have been first in his love, and through him first in all our hearts.
But look at the photographs and think, who could be captivated by such a one as her? A face only a mother could love, and that’s the truth. With her oversized brow and her sulky expression, it is not a lory she reminds one of so much as an egg. No, she could never be the heroine of the tale, but perhaps she could have been Humpty-Dumpty, teetering on the edge of a precipice and hurling glory and scorn down on her sister in contemptuous tones, glory and veiled threats of murder.
For alas for poor Ina! Even if Uncle D. had been taken with Ina first, first Ina with her high brow and set sausage curls, the curls that hung down bedraggled and unloved around her surly face, his heart was soon lost forever and always, to her younger sister, whose name he set among the stars. Alas, alas, for the little lass, alias Miss Alice, had a dark and disturbing gaze, bewitchingly delicate eyebrows, and a darling little pointed chin. The dark glow in her eyes set her apart, the glow of the abyss.
And yet, what was so special about Miss Alice? Nothing, thinks Ina, but what Uncle D. made of her, for isn’t the muse the invention of the artist, the beloved the creation of the lover? Wasn’t Alice a stolid, clever, regular little girl, nothing so remarkable after all? For didn’t she grow into an icy, unpleasant, unremarkable woman? Or perhaps she had been an ebullient, otherworldly delight of a girl and that spirit had been beaten out of her by the rigid switch of the nineteenth century. But who could accuse the Golden Age of flower fairies and children’s fantasy of destroying such a sprite as Uncle D. had imagined existed in his favorite? No, no. After all, aged Ina thinks, Alice must have always been the straight and narrow, the iron child, the respectable dullness that she later became, all the rest must have come from the heart of the lover, the eye of the beholder.
But could it truly only ever have been Uncle D.’s vision and not the creature he beheld? wonders Ina. For if it was thus, why should he not have fastened on me (a knotty problem)? Was it always, is it always, will it always be a matter of prettiness? That little Miss Alice was a dainty elfin creature next to which Ina looked large, pale, slow-moving, and ill-tempered? Could Uncle D.’s vision not pass through that exterior to light upon the spirit beneath?
Or perhaps, and here was a frightening thought, perhaps she had no spirit after all. Perhaps she was as dull and respectable and tame as her sister. Or perhaps she did have a spirit and it was a nasty, vicious thing, not at all congenial to flights of fancy or journeys of adventure. Perhaps the exterior did reflect the interior, in which case Alice must have been a sparkling, ethereal, unsettling spirit after all, because not even Ina could deny that her sister was beautiful, so beautiful as to merit a white stone.
At least, she had been when she was a child. An exceptional child, then, but a stunningly unremarkable adult. Something had been lost in the transition from girl to woman, but then, something always is.
And now, see what has happened! Even I, with the best of intentions, have wandered from Ina to Alice, and instead of elaborating on the plight of the elder sister, I find myself speculating on the spirit of the younger. How easy it is to pass over sulky Ina for ethereal Alice. Is it any wonder that Uncle D. did the same?
So perhaps the prudent thing is to refrain from further discussion and to return to the chapter title. Ina was first, first into the world, first into Uncle D.’s arms, and first to be photographed. She cannot be blamed for being the girl she was and not her sister. So for just a moment, consider Ina first, Ina first, Ina first.
2. ALICE HAS MIRROR-SIGN DELUSION
Alice has a secret, but not the one you think.
All her life, Alice has looked in the mirror and seen somebody else instead of herself. She is the only one to be so replaced—the images of her sisters, her mother, her father, all appear in the looking-glass where they ought to be, as clear as day. Alice recognizes them, knows them as she would know her own face, if ever it appeared in the glass, which it does not.
Instead of seeing her own brown bob, unsettling eyes, and pointed chin when she gazes into the pier glass, Alice is confronted with another little girl, quite different from herself. The other little girl she sees has long, stringy blond hair and no ban
gs at all. Her hair, all one length, straggles down her back like straw. Her face is round and dull, without any of the questioning gaze that Alice is told can be found in her own eyes. The other little girl never smiles. No matter what delight Alice takes in Uncle D.’s riddles and stories or how often she wins at croquet, Alice’s other-girl-reflection never seems at all pleased or excited, let alone transported with joy. The other-girl-reflection adopts expressions ranging from mildly irritated to viciously angry, no matter how Alice herself is feeling.
And Alice is feeling afraid. She is starting to suspect that this other little girl is plotting to take over her life. After all, the other-girl-reflection follows her around, absorbing every aspect of her existence, and nobody else seems to be able to tell the difference between them. Her mother and governess and nurse fix her hair and dress her in her finest clothing and then tell her to admire herself in the looking-glass. When she looks into the mirror, only she can see the other girl, plotting away and thinking nasty thoughts. All others around her insist that it really is her in the glass and eventually Alice stops arguing. But she is worried that one day the other little girl will step out of the mirror and, quick and brutal as a nightmare, push her through to the other side of the glass, where she will be trapped, helpless to intervene as the other little girl plays with her sisters, kisses her mother, and goes to tea with Uncle D. Every morning when she wakes up, Alice opens a book to make sure that she hasn’t been taken to looking-glass land while she slept.
One afternoon, while she and her sisters are on a boating expedition with Uncle D. and his friend the Duck, she sneaks a peek over the edge of the boat to check her reflection in the water. Sure enough, the ill-tempered stolid blond girl is looking back at her, daring her to disrupt the summer idyll by making a fuss about something that only she can see. In anger, Alice is about to bring her fist down on the reflection’s face when she glances up and catches Uncle D.’s eye. He looks away quickly, down at the reflection, and then his eyes flick back up to her face, startled. She realizes that he can see the other girl, too. He knows. Alice sighs with the relief of the perfectly understood, the perfect harmony, and lets her hand fall gently into the water.
Burning Girls and Other Stories Page 5