Ceremonies

by T E. D Klein

  It was the knife that brought the memories back, memories of the previous night, the incident at dinner…

  She had been so happy as they'd all sat down, happy that Rosie and Jeremy seemed to be hitting it off; happy, in a way, perhaps, that Rosie had arrived in time to stop her from doing something irrevocable; happy just to be spending a summer night in the company of two men she liked, in a comfortable candlelit restaurant with good food and an air conditioner that worked.

  She remembered how Rosie, smiling fondly, had been talking to her of her future; how all his words had gone to her head, all his talk about courses and openings and opportunities. 'You're an unusually talented young lady,' he'd been saying, exuberantly waving his steak knife. 'I expect great things from you!'

  Then suddenly, like the ending of a dream – she felt a chill even now as she remembered it – suddenly the lights had flickered once, twice, and gone off, leaving only the candles on the table.

  It had all happened in an instant. Seconds later the power had come back on; once again the air conditioner's hum had filled the room, and with it movement, conversation, laughter. But in that frozen moment of shadows and silence, with only the candle on the table for illumination, she had seen Rosie regarding her – and it had been like seeing him for the first time. In the altered light, that instant, everything had looked different: the old man's face had been hard, icy, cruel. He had held the knife poised in her direction, and his tiny eyes had glittered like razors in the candlelight.

  The bed was wide and almost filled the little room. They lay naked, the two of them, drugged with the heat of the evening, staring at the lantern light that flickered from the table by the wall. Deborah's hair, unfastened, was spread beneath her like a cape, black against the whiteness of the sheet. Around them lay their seven cats: Dinah and Tobias by Deborah's head, Habakkuk, or 'Cookie,' at her feet, Zillah with her face buried just behind Sarr's ear, 'Riah and Rebekah on the corner of the bed, and Bwada half beneath it on the wooden floor, yet well within reach of Sarr's caressing hand.

  They lay silently, listening, waiting for Freirs to leave for the night. They could hear him downstairs in the bathroom, noisily brushing his teeth, rinsing his mouth, zipping up his toilet kit, and blowing out the kerosene lamp. The thin wooden door opened with a rattle, followed by footsteps in the kitchen directly below them. Deborah leaned from the bed and watched his progress; through the chinks in the wide-plank floor, with its warped and tilted boards, she saw the faint gleam of Freirs' flashlight moving toward the back door. The door opened, closed, the latch clicked shut, and they heard footsteps descending the back steps. There was silence, broken only by a faint muttered 'God-damn!' – he had stepped on something in the grass – and then they were left alone with their thoughts.

  'He was in a bad mood tonight, wasn't he?' whispered Deborah. 'I think it was over Carol. Every time he spoke of her his face got angry.'

  Sarr half closed his eyes, settling back against the hard mattress as if it were of down. 'It's only what he deserved,' he said slowly. 'He went back to the city for one reason, and you and I both know what it was. His heart was filled with lust, and the Lord made him suffer for it.'

  'He misses her, honey, it isn't any more than that. He's courting her, just the way you courted me.'

  He appeared to consider this a moment. 'Well, maybe it's only natural to follow after someone your heart's set on… But he should never have followed her to that place!' His face had become hard again; he looked like the faded photograph of his father which glared sternly from atop the bureau.

  'He was only going home.'

  'He was leaving all the things we've offered him here, leaving it all behind like it meant nothing to him, like we mean nothing. And for what? For a mess of light and noise and show. 'Twas a mistake, going back there.'

  Deborah was silent a moment. 'I guess so,' she said. 'But you know, honey, this place is quite a change for him. He's not used to our ways yet. He likes having people around.' She paused. 'Can't say I blame him, either.'

  'Oh, I see.' A hint of smile played about his lips; without turning his head to look at her he reached over and cupped a breast in his hand. 'You're saying I'm not man enough for you anymore, is that right? And you want him instead?'

  She giggled and edged closer to him, dislodging two of the cats. 'That's right,' she said. 'I'm getting sick of the likes of you. I'm thinking I'll take me a lover.' She rolled over and pressed her body next to his. He ran his fingers through her hair, brushing it away from the pale skin of her shoulders.

  'Guess I should have listened to my mother,' he said, planting a kiss on her mouth. He looked into her face, then smiled. 'Glad I didn't, though.'

  The cats moved out of the way, reluctantly, as they made love. The old bed creaked and trembled.

  Afterward, even while still inside her, his eyes still closed and his breathing heavy, he was reaching out for the Bible on the night-stand. He slipped out of her just as his hands closed on the book's worn leather binding.

  She sighed. 'You know, honey, this is the last night we can do this for a while.'

  'Hmmm?' He lay on his elbows in the bed, already thumbing through the dog-eared pages, squinting at the columns of print in the flickering light.

  'I said we can't do this for a while -' less you want another mouth to feed.'

  He stared at her for a moment as if weighing the matter. Then, shaking his head, he returned to the Bible. 'There'll be time for such things,' he said. 'We owe so much now, you and I, and have so little ourselves… ' He paused again. 'Well, maybe the prophet can guide us.'

  He handed her the heavy book and got up from the bed. Silently he walked to the corner of the room near the fireplace where the wall faced inward toward the house, unadorned with pictures and unbroken by a window. Moving the simple hand-braided rug out of the way, he knelt facing the wall, his bare knees upon the planks.

  'Let's begin,' he said. He closed his eyes.

  Deborah sat upright in the bed, feeling the hard wooden headboard against her back; it seemed only fitting, the hardness, when she held the Bible on her lap. It was open to Jeremiah, as was usual when they performed the ceremony known as 'drawing the sortes,' though occasionally Sarr would test himself by substituting a less familiar chapter. Deborah raised her gaze to the opposite wall, where below a tattered Trenton State banner hung an ancient crocheted design, the Bird of Paradise in the Tree of Life. Keeping her eyes upon the green and gold foliage, she flipped through the chapter at random and poked her finger toward the bottom of the page.

  'Twenty-nine three,' she said.

  He remained silent, rigid.

  She read over the text and raised her eyebrows. "Fraid I started off with a mean one,' she said.' "By the hand of Elasah the son-'

  '-the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent unto Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon

  'Right.' She looked away, flipped the pages again. 'I wonder if Jeremy's been using those cards Carol gave him' – her finger stabbed downward – 'to tell fortunes with, the way we use the Bible. Eight fifteen.'

  ' "We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble!" Frankly, I think Carol swallowed a white lie about those cards. The Dynnod's not for telling fortunes.'

  'How do you know, honey?'

  'I read about it back in college. One of my religion courses.'

  'I thought the cards were just a game invented by some novelty company.'

  'The cards are, yes. But the pictures on them are a whole lot older.'

  'What are they for, then?'

  'They're supposed to bring on visions.'

  Deborah stared blankly at the ceiling while her fingers selected another passage. 'Hmmm. Well, I guess Carol didn't know any better.' She looked down. 'Forty-four seven.'

  ' "Wherefore commit ye this great evil against your souls, to cut off from you man and woman, child and suckling… " '

  'Right.' She c
hose another. 'Thirty-seven four. Speaking of sucklings, Lotte Sturtevant's belly is so big now that all of us think it's going to be a boy. Twins, even. Now, if I were to have a son, say-'

  ' "Now Jeremiah came in and went out among the people… "*

  '-he could help me with the housework when he was little, and you with the farm work by the time he was half grown. You've been saying you could use another hand. And there's-' She looked down. 'Um, eleven six. There's just no end of things that need doing around here.'

  ' "Then the Lord said unto me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and do them." ',

  'Right.' She flipped farther back. 'I expect all that rusted machinery in the barn is going to have to be cleaned or sold or -forty-nine sixteen.'

  ' "Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldst make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down." '

  'And have you noticed how the caterpillars have gotten under those eaves? There's a regular mess of them, last time I looked, and the other day Jeremy complained they're nesting in his building. Five thirty. And the woods by his windows need clearing-'

  ' "A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land." '

  'The land, yes. All that land's just going to waste right now. Ten twenty-two.

  ' "Behold, the noise of the bruit is coming, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons." '

  'Uh-huh.' Deborah smoothed back a lock of hair and stared reflectively at the ceiling. 'You said those cards are supposed to bring visions? The ones she gave Jeremy?'

  'That's right.'

  'Do they really work?'

  Sarr nodded, still facing the corner. 'Of course they do. All magic works.'

  'Maybe we ought to tell Jeremy.'

  There was a pause. 'I don't think the Lord means us to interfere. Consider it a part of his spiritual education.'

  'I wouldn't say-'

  Sarr glanced impatiently over his shoulder. 'Come on, Deb, let's get on with this.'

  'All right. Just one more.' She leafed blindly through the pages. Her finger stabbed toward the words. 'Five thirty.'

  ' "A wonderful and-" Wait a minute, we just did that.'

  Deborah peered at the words. 'My Lord, you're right! That's funny.' She turned to another passage and looked toward the ceiling, her finger poised above the page.

  At that moment a staccato drumming echoed from somewhere above them. The sound seemed to start at one corner of the room and, like Freirs' footsteps earlier that night, to pass above their heads and beyond the farther wall. The cats looked up and growled, tails lashing.

  'Oh, no!' groaned Deborah, laying aside the Bible. 'Not again.'

  They'd been hearing it for the past few nights: the sound of tiny feet magnified by the reverberation of the wooden boards. Mice were up there, young ones, born just this spring and thriving in the past month's unseasonably warm temperatures; but as they ran across the attic floor, feet thumping on the floorboards, they sounded huge as weasels.

  Sarr, still on his knees, was gazing toward the ceiling. He shook his head. 'We'll have to let the cats get at them. There's nothing else to do.'

  'Oh, no, honey. I'll not have it! I'll not have them killing things.'

  Protectively with her hands she reined in Dinah and Toby, drawing them toward her, but both continued to look longingly at the ceiling, making little sounds of eagerness and hunger deep in their throats.

  Sarr got to his feet and came over to the bed. 'Look,' he said gently, 'you don't want those creatures to keep you awake all night, do you? They'll just multiply, you know.'

  'Then you and I can go up there and put them out – give them a way to get outside, where they'll have more to eat. I'll not have any murdering in my house.'

  She closed the Bible and laid it back on the table, then settled down in bed, face turned toward the wall. Clearly this was to be her last word on the subject. Sarr, sighing, climbed in beside her and blew out the light just as another series of footsteps rattled overhead.

  Soon, despite the occasional noise, both he and Deborah were sleeping soundly, chests rising and falling in a common rhythm. But all night long the seven cats looked up toward the ceiling, eyes wide, and growled.

  Rosie came to see her that night. He seemed positively cherubic, all chuckles, winks, and smiles. It almost made her forget about what she'd seen in the restaurant the evening before.

  'I just dropped by to see if they'd gotten that awful gas under control,' he said, shaking his little head. 'Frankly, young lady, I was worried about you.'

  He had brought her a gift in a large, flat cardboard box – it’s some kind of clothing, thought Carol eagerly – but he wouldn't let her open it till after they'd talked. 'First,' he said, 'I want to see those summaries you've been doing for me,' waggling his plump finger with mock-schoolmasterly concern; but when she handed him her notes on the Cherokees and the aborigines he barely seemed to glance at them.

  'Excellent, excellent,' he said distractedly, shoving the papers into a folder and withdrawing a slim grey book. 'It's clear to me now that you're ready to go deeper, young lady. High time I started giving you some language lessons.'

  Ghe'el… ghavoola… ghae'teine…

  He gave her the lesson in her bedroom, Carol having invited him in; somehow the living room held bad associations for her now, and

  Rosie himself seemed just as happy to escape it. The two of them sat sipping iced tea, Carol on her bed and Rosie propped like an animated rag doll in the high-backed chair.

  For more than an hour he read to her from the book he'd brought, an old, flimsily bound language text entitled Some Notes on Agon di-Gatuan or 'The Old Tongue,' With Particular Respect to Its Suppression in the Malay Subcontinent. Appendiced with a Chian Song Cycle and Primer. It had been privately printed in London in 1892, and the binding was now held together with black electrical tape. Rosie, face half buried in the book, would read a string of words aloud in a strange high singsong voice, and Carol was expected to repeat them with the same accent and intonation.

  Riyamigdl'eth… riyamoghu…

  'It's actually the only way to learn a language,' he assured her. 'The way a baby does – by imitation and constant repetition.'

  He seemed convinced that he was right, and surely he knew what he was talking about. But the words she repeated were meaningless to her, like catechisms in an alien religion; for the life of her she couldn't remember a single one only seconds after repeating it, and she couldn't understand how familiarizing herself with some obscure phrases from a long-dead native dialect was supposed to help her in her reading. What possible good was all this going to do her? What was this Old Language, anyway?

  'It's rather special,' Rosie explained, looking up from the book. 'It's the language people speak when they speak in tongues.'

  This didn't sound right at all, but she didn't have the heart to argue with him. 'I don't think I understand,' she said, hoping he wouldn't lose patience with her. 'What do the words mean?'

  Rosie smiled. 'It's a song about angels,' he said. 'One of the Dhol Chants.'

  'Dhol?' The word was somehow familiar.

  'Yes, like in the Dynnod. You remember.'

  'But I thought that was Welsh,' she said, thoroughly confused now, and already weary of it all. Maybe it was the heat; the iced tea didn't seem to be helping much. 'How can something be Welsh and also Malayan and also be spoken in tongues if it's not-'

  'Carol,' he said gently, shaking his head, 'the important thing is simply that you memorize this little rhyme.' He returned to the book.

  Miggke'el ghae'teine moghwvoola…

  Carol struggled to say the words. They seemed formed for other mouths than hers, other tongues. Yet somehow Rosie didn't seem to mind; he just kept nodding and smi
ling and watching her with satisfaction in his eyes. The alien sounds reverberated in the room, as if every word she'd uttered were hanging in the air, filling the space around her like incense, softening the edges of things and making her so dizzy she couldn't think straight. Later she recalled Rosie patiently explaining something about 'who the Vodies are,' and wondered if she'd heard right; and there'd been something he'd said about 'things hidden behind the clouds' – had she been dreaming? – and she vaguely recalled his promising to teach her the rules for ancient games, contests, dances, and she herself thinking how this, at least, would have a bearing on her work, maybe she could teach them to the children in the library…

  'And next time,' he added, 'I'll teach you something special, the real names for the days of the week.'

  She wanted to ask him what he meant, why he was filling her head with such strange impossible things that made no sense at all, but he had gotten to his feet and was already opening the box on the night table.

  'Because you've been such a good pupil,' he said, eyes twinkling. He sliced the ribbon with a surprisingly sharp fingernail and lifted the lid. Inside, something pale lay covered by tissue paper. He reached down and withdrew a white silk short-sleeved dress that glimmered in the light.

  She heard herself gasp. 'Oh,' she said, 'how beautiful!'

  She got up from the bed and felt the cloth; it ran like water in her hand. There was, she saw, no label in the back, or else it had been removed; maybe Rosie was embarrassed about where he'd bought it, or maybe he was ashamed of how expensive it was. She held it next to her body. The style was old-fashioned and a little full for her, yet it was cut rather short, almost embarrassingly so, in fact; she would have to keep her legs well together when she wore it. But oh, how lovely it was!

  'I can't wait to try it on,' she said.