She squints at him, head tilted slightly, as though trying to make sure she heard correctly. Matthew looks down at the bottle, suddenly embarrassed.
“I thought this is what you wanted,” he says. “I thought you wanted me around more.”
“Matthew, what have you done?” she says.
“What have I done?” He slams a hand against the table, and almost falls from his seat. “I never asked for any of this. This isn’t the kind of life I wanted.” The walls of their house suddenly feel confining, like a drywall prison made by the devil himself, surrounded by an ocean of steel, cement, and stone. He longs for birch and pine as far as the eye can see. He longs for the Old Country.
It had been a mistake to come to these ghostly streets, this Sheol, where the blood dries in the veins, and nothing is real. One movement follows another, and every action seems to mean less than it did in the last repetition. He has had enough of this gray world.
Matthew looks at Lena. She used to be so beautiful, but the last seven years have been hard on her. Her hair, though she is only thirty-two, has grayed at the roots, and her skin hangs more loosely from her bone and muscle, which are still hard and strong.
“I need to leave,” Matthew says, and Lena tries to stop him. He pushes her out of his way, as though realizing for the first time that some things have to be fought for.
He makes his way to the Willamette River. The Rusalka waits for him, past the dirt and tree roots, ankle-deep in the water. She extends a hand to him with the openness of a preacher welcoming the repentant to a baptismal service.
They kiss, and the water rushes past, unseeing.
Nikolai gets home, and his small Petersburg house is quiet. The usual sounds of the knife battering the chopping block or borsht bubbling and simmering on the grate in the corner of their fireplace are gone. There isn’t even the crackle of a fire. He hears only a faint creaking from their bedroom.
“Nastya, you lazy dog,” he yells. “Where are you?”
The only answer is another creak of wood.
He drops the horsewhip, and walks into the room. In his moments of honesty and lucidity, Nikolai knew this was coming, predicted it, but was also shamed by his powerlessness to stop himself from bringing her to this point.
She hangs from a noose slung over a rafter and tied to their back bedpost. A stool lies overturned on the floor next to her. The creaking of the wood follows her slowly swinging form like a groaning metronome.
Nastya Mikhailovna died at the age of nineteen after five years of marriage to Nikolai Petrovich, aged forty-two. The year was 1723. Before her suicide, the Rusalka had led her first man to the grave when she drowned Nikolai’s son in a soup pot.
Neil Davidson is a graduate from the University of Oregon and will be starting at the University of California, Davis in the fall, where he will be getting his M.A. in creative writing. He has a friendly obsession with myth of all varieties, but an especial love of Russian and Slavic folklore. When not reading or writing, Neil can generally be found at punk shows, drinking coffee somewhere, or cooking. He also has a weakness for campy horror movies, especially those from the eighties.
It Wants to be a Swamp
by
C. S. Malerich
The worst part about the nights I closed was riding home on the metro. Past midnight, and I’d be bone-tired and shuffling, with no patience left, and half the time there were delays because one or another track was shorting. The announcement would come scratching over the PA, apologizing for the inconvenience. Then I’d drop my head against the seat and hear Hector’s voice in my head: “It’s the climate here. Water’s always getting into the tunnels.” He liked explaining things—book smart, the boy was—and then he’d shake his head like I was acting foolish just for expecting things to work like they were supposed to. Well, don’t look at me, hombre. I didn’t build the city in a swamp.
Even if the train did run smoothly, there were always people around, no matter how late it was, all ready to work my last nerve. Like, for instance, someone would block the escalator off the platform. Two hundred feet long and slow as molasses, and somebody was always standing on it, like it’s an amusement park ride. Right in the middle too, where no one could get around them to walk up. I mean, if you’re going to stand, at least stand to the side and let people by. Some of us want to get home and watch a half hour of TV before we pass out on the couch and put a crick in our neck.
I would never push someone, but I would get to the step right behind them, tap my foot, and cough—loud—in their ear. Most people, they got the hint and scooched over. Then I’d slide past with a sarcastic “Thank you” and stomp the rest of the way up the stairs.
But as soon as I saw the hulking figure ten steps above me, I knew I was stuck. She—I figured it was a she because of the round hips—was standing in the exact center of the escalator, surrounded by plastic shopping bags, which, so far as I could tell, were stuffed full of more shopping bags. Her head was down, or else pulled inside that grimy knit sweater like a turtle’s, but I could see strings of long gray hair. A pale, flowery skirt covered her rear, ending just above the back of the knees. From there the legs were thick as tree stumps, gnarled with bulging veins and cellulite. The feet disappeared into unlaced work boots. It was a hot night in the middle of the summer, and I knew if I got any closer the B.O. would just get stronger and sharper. If I did try my usual trick—if I coughed or sighed or snorted—I couldn’t imagine this person caring enough to move aside.
As the woman stood there on the escalator, she rocked from side to side in her boots, slowly and slightly. I heard a soft moaning. “Oh … oh … oh … uh-oh … oh …oh,” she went, the sound rising in pitch step-by-step until she kind of hiccupped and it dropped again. Then the pattern repeated, seven notes in all.
What’s that about? I wondered. Did she even know she was making a sound? Maybe it was some kind of tic, or a chant. My jaw clenched. I was polite to customers all day at work, even the rude ones and the crazy ones, and the rude, crazy ones; I didn’t have the energy for it after hours.
Two wiry teenagers passed me, laughing and hollering. They weren’t afraid, and they weren’t stopping. So what the hell? I began to climb the ten stairs that separated me from the bag lady.
The kids reached her before I did. The first one squeezed past and cleared the shopping bags with the grace of a gymnast. He turned around three steps above, looking for his friend.
Instead he got an eyeful of the bag lady’s face. Whatever it was he saw there, it turned him three shades paler and froze him to the step.
Meanwhile, the second kid tripped on his untied shoelaces and fell into the woman’s left side, where she had another bag balanced on the crook of her hip, under her sweater.
At least I thought it was another bag. So did the kid, I think. But as he sprang away, he must have realized the same thing I did: The bulge under the woman’s sweater was part of her. An extra appendage or an ulcer. I’d have sworn I heard a splish-splish, the same noise my cousin’s waterbed made when you sat on it.
“Jesus Christ!” shouted the kid who’d fallen. It was enough to startle his buddy into motion, to run back down and yank him to his feet. They took off, racing back up the steps.
In this system, the escalators were no better than the train rails: Half the time they broke down into nothing but stairs with teeth. And ours picked that moment to grind to a halt. The two kids ran, whooping and laughing in relief when they made it to the top.
Me, I was stuck. Crap. I wasn’t brave enough now to climb the last five steps between me and the bag lady. I definitely wasn’t brave enough to press past her. What if she looked at me? What if I touched that fleshy bulge?
But the escalator wasn’t moving. Neither was she. I’d just decided to walk back down and take the elevator instead when she turned around.
Her eyes were streaming water. I don’t mean she was crying, I mean her eye sockets were open faucets and water was pouring out. Two streams
ran down her cheeks and off her jaws, into the collar of her sweater, which was already soaked through in the front. And she was coming toward me.
It didn’t take me a second: I spun around and hightailed it back down the motionless escalator. The steps were damn slippery, more slippery than usual—damp, I realized, and I squeezed the rubber handrail harder. As soon as my sneakers hit the platform I changed direction for the elevator, but the soles squeaked and went sailing off the opposite way. I crashed into the concrete on my shoulder.
A train was just leaving the platform, its few passengers approaching the escalator. At the sight of my wipeout, I heard gasps.
“Are you all right, miss?” asked a middle-aged man in a gray suit.
“Wait a minute,” said a woman in a turquoise hijab as I struggled to pull myself up. “Make sure you haven’t broken anything first.”
Good advice. The kind of thing I might have said if somebody had fallen in front of me. But these people didn’t have a demon bag lady coming down the stairs after them. As soon as I got to my feet, I pushed away the helping hands and bolted for the elevator. The button lit at my push, but the doors didn’t open. I hit the button again. And again.
Behind me, I could hear screams and gasps as the other people caught sight of the crying woman. Above it all rang that same seven-note moan. “Oh … oh … oh …” Getting nearer. I hit the elevator button again.
Finally the car reached the platform level and the door slid back. Laughing with relief, I stepped into the elevator and slapped the button to take me to street level. Then I went to the far corner of the little space and turned. The door hadn’t slid closed yet. Hadn’t even begun to …
Are you kidding me? Nothing works in this system?
On the platform, the woman had passed the startled knot of passengers where I’d slipped. Her eyes were still streaming as she ambled toward me with her bags, leaving a smear of water behind her. Her gaze—I know this sounds strange, because with her eyes just open holes gushing water the whole time, how could I tell?—but her gaze was fixed on me. “Oh … oh … oh . . uh-oh …”
Could anyone help me? Did I need help? I couldn’t even make my lips form the words.
Now the woman had crossed the threshold into the elevator car. She looked at me with her spigots-for-eyes, blinked once—for a split second the twin rivulets went dry—and then turned around. She set down one set of plastic bags and pushed the button.
Her action relaxed me, unexpectedly. It made sense. As impossibly strange as this person was, she’d had the same idea I did, to walk back to the platform and take the elevator when the escalator went kaput. I didn’t blame her. I didn’t want to climb all those stairs either.
The elevator door slid closed and the car began to rise.
As we rode, the woman didn’t face me again, and I tried to concentrate on catching my breath and not looking at the steady trickle running down the inside of each leg into her boots, or thinking about that unnatural bulge below the left side of her sweater. Not my business, not my problem. But with every little motion she made in the elevator, I could hear a gurgle.
All at once, the car came to a stop. The door did not open.
After a moment, the woman took a step forward and hit the “Door Open” button, but nothing happened. Frustrated, she did it again, repeatedly.
“We aren’t at street level yet,” I said, looking through the grimy glass walls at nothing but black.
The woman half-turned toward me, and I flinched again at the sight of her face, her empty eyes.
“I think we’re stuck,” I said.
She turned back toward the elevator buttons and then stood motionless. If it wasn’t my imagination, the water flow was even greater now, like someone had opened a faucet full blast.
“Okay, ma’am,” I said after a moment, “I’m going to call for help.” She didn’t move. To reach the red emergency button, I had to step over her bags and press myself against the wall. I did it. I didn’t even hesitate when my sneaker filled with water in the cold puddle she’d made.
The dispatcher at the other end of the speaker told me to sit tight. “An engineer is on the scene, and the fire department is coming. We’ll get you out soon.”
“Oh … oh … oh,” chanted the woman. I didn’t dare change positions, because the dispatcher might come back with instructions for our rescue, and the woman didn’t give me an extra inch. I looked anywhere but her eye sockets. Her face was plump but wrinkled, and her neck was covered in liver spots. She ignored me and went on with her moaning and gurgling and spilling.
It was probably her fault the elevator had stopped. Maybe the escalator too. Sure, breakdowns happened pretty often—but both the escalator and the elevator on the same night?
Water’s always getting in, I remembered Hector telling me. Was this the reason, standing in front of me? A demon haunting our metro system.
“Oh … oh … oh … uh-oh … oh … oh,” went the woman. The rhythm seemed to match the thought that occurred to me then: This place wants to be a swamp.
“Do you have to keep doing that?” I snapped.
“Oh … oh … oh …”
“What is it, anyway? What are you crying for?”
The noise stopped. The only sound in the elevator became the tinkle of pouring water. The woman turned her head toward me, the stream of her right eye socket soaking her shoulder.
Her lips parted, and a mouthful of water ran out there too. With it came a voice that sounded like a gurgling fountain. “I cannot feed my children.”
I would have bet you anything she wasn’t going to reply, bet you my flat-screen or three months’ tips—whatever you wanted. And even less than that, I wouldn’t have expected words that made sense.
Once she spoke, I was mesmerized. “Oh,” I said, as if this were a normal, make-nice conversation, “how many children do you have?”
Her mouth opened again, spilling more water to the floor—now I was standing in a good six inches—and she said, “Too many to count.” She cocked her streaming head for a moment, like she was deciding whether to trust me or not, and her arms folded over her sweater protectively. “I could show you.”
“Okay, yeah,” I said, daring myself more than her. “Show me.”
She unfolded her arms and pulled open her sodden sweater. Underneath, she was naked. I could handle that. I could handle seeing her skin, pale and slick and liver-spotted, her breasts and stomach drooping over the waistband of her skirt.
But on her left side, the extra bulge that had frightened the boy on the escalator came rolling over her hip. It was a pocket of flesh, stuffed full as a turkey carcass at Thanksgiving. She reached one hand inside; with the other, she beckoned me closer.
My hand went to my mouth.
“Look! Look!” she gurgled, as she drew something from the pouch. A live fish. She clutched it where the tail met the body, while it flopped this way and that—a river fish, with bluish-brown body and spots along the belly, eight or nine inches long. Hector would have known what kind it was.
I stared as she dropped it into the water. It landed with a splash and jackknifed its body back and forth furiously, attempting to swim away. I was standing in water up to my ankles, but it wasn’t enough for the animal.
I turned my attention away from the flopping fish as the woman cupped both hands into her pocket of flesh and showed me the contents as she scooped them out. A school of silver minnows. A water bug. A dragonfly. Two frogs. More fish. They all went into the water. A slimy body brushed my calf before swimming away, and I felt heebie-jeebies crawl up my spine. The water kept rising and the elevator was becoming—
“Here, look, you’ll like him.” The woman was pulling out something fuzzy now, yellow and brown. A duckling? Yes. She had it by the neck, but didn’t hold onto the duckling any longer than the others. It landed in the water too, but had more luck paddling around the elevator than the first fish did swimming. She was right: My heart warmed at the sight of the downy b
aby like it hadn’t to the fish or frogs.
Another duckling came from the woman’s pouch then, and another and another after that, until I could only think of a magician pulling scarves from his sleeve. Finally came a mother duck, gray and brown, with a flare of indigo on one hind feather, who quacked to her babies. They paddled into formation behind her in a neat line. Meanwhile, the large fish had disappeared below the surface of the water, and five frogs sat ribbetting back and forth on the bag lady’s floating bags.
“They look fine to me,” I said. I was anything but. The water was nearly at my waist, and I was feeling desperate to get out before it got any higher. Before she pulled a hungry alligator out of that pouch.
“No,” she said sharply, shaking her head and releasing another gush from her mouth. “All dying.” Gush. “Starving. Choking.” Gush, gush. “Smothered. Poisoned—”
“I see your point!” I said. If I could stop her from talking, maybe I could buy myself enough time for the fire department to get me out. I hit the emergency button again, waiting for the dispatcher to answer, but all I got was static. “And I’m very sorry about your … children,” I said.
“No you aren’t,” she gushed back, and reached for one of her plastic bags full of plastic bags, shooing a frog off of it. The frog hopped into the water with a plop and came swimming toward me. I splashed to keep it away.
Meanwhile, she’d separated one bag out, and before I could understand what she meant to do with it, she’d seized a fish again with her free hand and dropped it into the bag. “Starved. Choked. Smothered …” she chanted, while the fish thrashed inside the bag. She tied the handles and strung it over her wrist.
“What—?”
She grabbed the smallest duckling around the neck and started to put it inside another bag.
“Don’t!” I shouted now, lunging through the chest-high water to cup the fuzzy little body in my hands instead. “You’ll suffocate him,” I scolded—stupidly, for someone who was about to drown. But I released the duckling again to the water. The tiny webbed feet paddled frantically to get away, as if it understood the danger.
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