Tales of Mystery and Truth

by Jeffrey K. Hill

  When the scales were balanced, she paid. His stylus recorded the transaction in a dusty ledger, and he handed her a receipt. She took her new book and lowered her eyes before turning to walk away.

  In addition to books, The Beggars of Azure offered tables in a café setting where patrons could refresh themselves and relax, spend a few minutes or a few hours with a favored or newly discovered literary treasure. Here she purchased a steaming coffee and sat in her regular place in the dim corner. She did not look around to observe others, or scan the crowd for a friendly face, or eavesdrop on conversations. She sipped the coffee, enjoying its warmth as it flowed through her, and opened the book to read.

  In the middle of the opening paragraph, a form appeared beside her, as if risen from the edge of the book. Startled, she adjusted her glasses and looked up at the intrusion into her world. Words caught in her throat the moment her eyes fell on him.

  He stared at her without moving, as if wary of frightening a small animal. Some unseen force prevented her from averting her eyes, and she gazed back blankly, as if across a blackened sky. She felt he must surely recognize her idiocy and turn away, but he remained longer than she thought reasonable.

  She knew better than to allow anyone access to her safe existence. She had survived this long only by remaining alone and thereby insusceptible to being hurt. Whenever someone would happen to catch her eye, she would take care not to smile in order for them to understand she did not wish to be disturbed. If anyone spoke to her she would reply in clipped language of a weary tone until they left her alone again.

  But this man had caught her at a moment of weakness, lulled to reverie by the book, and she had been unable to defend against his intrusion. She sat as if witnessing some marvel, unable to move or speak. She had not discovered a new world but, remaining in her own, another had entered. She wanted to invite this nameless stranger to join her, accept this gift of unexpected beauty.

  She had always taken precaution against outside intrusion, had defended against the oppression of the Regime. She had locked all feelings into a dungeon in the pit of her stomach. But now those feelings, working so long forgotten and hidden in the dark, had risen in rebellion and freed her spirit.

  Without resistance the man had breached the fortress of her solitude. His smile conveyed a timeless sensation, and she resigned herself to his presence. Her eyes slipped shut and a tingle ran through her body just beneath the skin. She felt a great rending, a death and birth, stars rising inside her.

  When she reopened her eyes, he was gone.

  She watched for a moment the place where she had last seen him, hoping he might suddenly reappear around the corner. Where she had once cultivated her solitude and worn it like a badge of honor, in his wake she felt a shortness of breath and a lonely despair. He had somehow uncovered her isolation, and she felt herself sitting naked and exposed to the rest of the world, a figure to be mocked.

  She slowly turned in embarrassment to see who might be watching her. An old couple sat sipping tea and flipping through an oversized volume of propagandist art; a student sat surrounded by open books, running his hands through frazzled hair; and at two tables pushed together in the center was a group of four rowdy patrons whom she always saw there, no matter the hour, as if they had no homes. A few other people wandered about in various states of reverence in their huge private temple of books. No one seemed to have seen her encounter with the mysterious man, or to have noticed her at all. She was as anonymous as she had always tried to be.

  In her mind that moment stood as if out of time. The nameless man had appeared so abruptly, and passed so quickly, yet she felt he had stood before her forever. As she gazed at him a lifetime had passed in her mind. In that instant her view of life through the analytical eye of the senses had been superseded by a view through the inner eye of the soul. That was how it felt when she awoke from impossible dreams.

  Shaken by grief and relief, she fled the bookstore. Her existence could not resume unchanged until she was once again safe at home. But a woman stood on the walk, directly outside the entrance, and did not move. She pressed herself against the rough wall to slip past the woman, brushing her elbow inadvertently. She offered a half smile that, since she also lowered her head, could only have been half-glimpsed, and hurried down the steps to the street.

  From behind she heard a long-forgotten name called gently.

  She did not recognize the voice. She had not recognized the woman. But she knew the name well. It was not her given name, and it could not be a coincidence this stranger knew the pet name her mother had given her as a child. The encounter with the man had left her vulnerable and she was swarmed with fear, wanting to run. She did not remember stopping, but when she tried to continue walking slowly, anonymously, she felt a tug at her rucksack.

  She turned cautiously to face the woman.

  “Gutenabend,” the woman said.

  “Good evening.”

  The woman was a little taller, a little thinner, with shoulder-length black hair to match the color of her clothes. She dragged luxuriously on a cigarette, as if time waited for her. From her lips, to her posture, to her scent, everything about this woman was supremely seductive. Everything except her crooked and wrinkled fingers.

  “Don’t call him,” said the soft voice.

  “What?”

  The woman smiled and raised the cigarette to her lips. She extended her long leg forward, and leaned close. “Where are you headed?”

  “Nowhere.”

  She suspected this woman was an undercover operative, perhaps an official censor. There could be no other explanation for the woman knowing her name. The Regime allowed almost no privacy. She had even heard whispered that couples were often assigned a time for sexual relations. But she did not understand why they would watch her so closely.

  The woman smirked and sucked her cigarette. “Nowhere?”

  “Home,” she replied quietly.

  The woman dropped the end of the cigarette on the stones and crushed it beneath her black boot. With a smirk, she turned and sauntered away.

  The street was empty.

  She walked home quickly, confused by the seductive woman and the nameless man and her own unfamiliar feelings. Everything seemed strange, as if she had never walked these darkened streets before. Now she saw danger in her surroundings, and felt watched by unseen eyes. She was no longer safely insulated in her own world, but exposed and vulnerable to everything around her. Twice she turned down the wrong street, only to realize her mistake several blocks later. Then, at last, at the dark end of the street where she had once heard someone say only artists lived, she found her squat building and hurried inside.

  The smell of the disinfectant sprayed monthly in each apartment by the Regime was overpowering. She threw her rucksack on the ground and crept to the window. As she parted the blinds with caution, she half expected to find the woman in black standing under the single lamp at the corner below, smoking another cigarette and watching her window. But she saw nobody outside. This frightened her even more, because she felt sure someone was hiding, concealed in the shadows. Then she heard the faint sound of Irmgard Seefried singing “Ainsi frémit mon coeur, prêt à se consoler”, and everything was safe and familiar again.

  When she had first taken this dreary apartment, she had thought a soprano resided nearby and spent much of her day practicing. But the practice continued day after day and throughout the night without variation. She soon realized the aria was a recording from a French opera. And though it was absolutely the most touching piece of music she had ever heard, the constant repetition had irritated her to the point she determined she would be forced to move elsewhere. Then one day, like the man who sleeps through the rumble of the commuter train past his hovel, she ceased to notice the song. At once it had changed from a nuisance to a welcome reassurance.

  She opened the window, eager for a breeze. Her own heart slowly ceased its trembling. She walked back through the cell of her apartment t
o pick up her rucksack. When she had dropped it, everything had spilled out across the parquet floor. She picked up the thick journal, which she carried with her everywhere to scribble her thoughts and feelings, and two new books. She had purchased Sky in Narrow Streets, but could not recall choosing the other. She remembered sitting down with an armful of selections, as always, but finally choosing only the one, and returning all the others to the shelf. She was certain she had not even browsed through this one, so memorably individual with its blank cover and spine, and its hand-bound detail. But somehow it had appeared in her possession. She wondered if, in her haste, she had gathered it into her pack by mistake.

  She wondered at the unidentified book. Something did not feel right. She knew only that she had not paid for it, and the consequences of theft were severe. Her mind flashed back to the woman in black, and she worried this might have been a member of the police in disguise. For all she knew, the woman might have been following her throughout the bookstore, witnessed her take the mysterious book, though only by accident, and was now amassing a force to apprehend her.

  She opened the bottom drawer of her bureau and shoved the book under an old blanket. She checked the locks on the windows and put the chain on the door. With a sigh of relief she turned, and from the wall the pretty young woman in her favorite painting smiled as if all were well.

  She lay down on the bed with legs pulled to her chest, surrounded by an ever-growing void from which she suddenly despaired at seeing for a brief moment a possible escape and then learning she would never be able to free herself. Slowly she gathered around herself the resignation necessary to stand up and carry on an existence that would forever be sabotaged by thoughts of what might have been. She would remain trapped forever, and in its neglect her desire would grow and press down upon her until eventually she suffocated, the tiny struggling new life snuffed out without a chance, leaving only the discarded shell of a person twice-briefly beautiful.

  * * *

  The inner eye of her soul opened. The singing startled her from her reading. She listened for a few minutes, waiting for the end of the aria, but the singer started again from the beginning. With reluctance she marked her place in the book and set it aside to search out this endless soprano.

  On the floor she found the staff of notes being sung, and followed its trail into the adjoining room. As soon as she opened the door, the singing ceased. Though midday, the windows were shuttered and her mother lay in bed hidden beneath a mound of sheets and blankets.

  “Mamma, what’s wrong?”

  “Ah, my child.” A maternal smile crept over her face, and an arm appeared faintly from beneath the covers, reaching out to be touched. “Only lovers die lonely deaths.”

  She took her mother’s hand. “You’re so hot.” She placed her own hand on her mother’s forehead and wiped away the sweaty, sticky hair. “I think I should call the doctor.”

  “Is that how you would finish me?”

  She stared at her mother’s horrified eyes. “But I would have you cured.”

  Her mother scoffed. “They will take me and put me in one of those dirty cells and I won’t be human any more. I’ll just be another of their specimens to observe and study and keep.”

  “They don’t do that any more.”

  Her mother looked around the room from behind the cover of her blankets. “I hear their screams at night. The women howl like dogs.”

  She suspected her mother was delirious again, and knew she would need the doctor. But after two months of this wasting illness, her allotment would allow for only one more service call: that of the undertaker. She crossed to open the window and let in some air. When she unlatched the shutter, she discovered the window had been sealed with bricks.

  “Were you singing?” she asked with a smile.

  “It was you who was singing,” said her mother, turning her head to look away. “Always the center of attention.”

  She walked back to the bed and patted her mother’s hand. “You should sleep for a while.”

  “You have made me so lonely.”

  Her mother’s words made her wince. She had spent every day at her side, nursing her alone, and after being treated as little more than a showpiece through her long childhood.

  “I’m right here.”

  Her mother’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm. “Promise you’ll stay with your mother and take care of her.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  She looked up at the clock. Two enchained figures came upright together. The chimes began, and she found herself counting along. But after sounding twelve, they did not stop. The sound continued,—Bong!—slowly,—Bong!—relentlessly—Bong! She turned to replace her mother’s arm on the bed, so she could go stop the clock. Her mother’s eyes flared, her body trembled. She could feel her mother’s pulse race. The chimes continued.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Her mother stared beyond her toward the errant clock, as if possessed, mouthing words that had no sound. She released her mother’s hand and turned back to rise. Then she saw it too. From the clock spread a black apparition of Death.

  “Love her you leave, Lover—”

  “Mother.”

  “—leave me I die.”

  When she could not move to save her mother, no matter how hard she tried, she knew it was a dream. Yet she could not rouse herself either. The clock continued to sound. She watched grinning Death swoop to embrace her mother. She felt her body held down, her head shoved against the wall, her ears ringing with the relentless chimes.

  “Tell me why,” she cried.

  Her mother made no reply.

  Death bared its toothy grin and said, “The will stops the tiny purple girl after thousands of sad and sweet chocolate parts.”

  * * *

  She woke, eyes wet with weeping. She lay tense in bed, listening for any sign she was no longer alone. The only sound she heard was of her own labored breaths. But she could not relax, given the unknown nature of the book and the strange circumstance by which she had come to possess it. It even seemed the book had triggered her troubling dream, and every breathless second it drew a lurking evil closer. The book was an unwelcome intruder in her apartment. With it she did not feel alone, she could not feel safe.

  She had seen in the bookstore the rows and rows of empty shelves where thousands of volumes would have been if they had not been banned. Possession of the remaining books was subject to approval by the Regime, and the consequences of disapproval were terrifyingly unknown. Her own father had disappeared under strange circumstances, gone to work one innocent day just after the Regime had come to power, and still, after fourteen years, not yet returned.

  Her feelings of guilt alone convicted her of wrongdoing. To hide the book, or burn it, or do anything but return it would simply be incontestable proof of her crime. She could not live day after frightful day wondering when and how she would be taken into custody and convicted. She could readily imagine the Regime testing the loyalty of its citizens by planting sensitive material in their possession. Especially the more radical students and artists, who were tolerated only as a benevolent front to the world behind which lurked an exacting tyranny. The tortures of the imagination inspired by the Regime were often more terrible than any discipline they might mete out.

  She dressed and, with a momentary shudder of trepidation, retrieved the book from the bureau. It looked ordinary and harmless in her hands.

  She glanced through the blinds to be sure the street was still deserted. She listened for a moment at the door, and heard nothing from the corridor. Still she hesitated, fearful of opening the door and exposing her insecurity.

  She took a deep breath and glanced back at the painting on the wall. The pretty young woman with the wide innocent eyes and the enigmatic smile soothed her nerves. Her identification card and papers were in order, so she would dutifully return the book to the bookstore and free herself from suspicion and guilt.

  As she neared The Beggars of
Azure, she found herself slowing, wary of encountering the seductive woman again. When she could see the entrance was clear, her pace quickened. But once through the door, she paused, fearing the presence of the guard. Inside, she saw several of the permanent patrons already at their table, though considerably less rowdy. The rest of the bookstore appeared empty, and the guard was not at his post. Breathlessly she approached the kindly owner, who, in the slowness of early morning business, was himself crouched over a musty tome.

  “How may I help, Fräulein?” he said.

  She casually placed the book on the old wooden counter and stepped back. “I wanted to return this.”

  “Let me see,” Callimachus said, adjusting his glasses and pulling the book close to his eyes. He opened the cover and frowned. “I do not know this title.”

  Patiently he held the book forward until she was inclined to take it back.

  “I’m sure I must have picked it up here,” she said, staring at it in her hands. “Perhaps you could check your records?”

  The man peered at her over the rims of his tiny spectacles and then bent below the counter with a creak of joints. He hefted up a huge tattered volume that was secured by a chain. The cover was inscribed in gold leaf with the title The Book of What Is to Be Found. He began to flip through the pages.

  She looked around the bookstore. A stooped old lady hobbled through the timeless aisles of History. A little girl ran babbling toward her mother, waving a colorful primer. The group of regulars had become eerily quiet.

  Callimachus passed his long craggy finger rapidly across a page. “How did you get this?” he demanded.

  She suddenly worried this man whom she had trusted, who had fooled her into vulnerability, would now turn her over to the authorities. Her hope for deliverance from this unsettling episode crumbled into dust. Her fear the book was banned seemed all too real.

  “I believe there was a slight mistake. I was here yesterday to purchase another book, and when I returned home I found I had this book as well, though I know I did not pay for it.”