Her hand clutched at the crescent moon. “Mother,” she began, her eyes darting like flickering moths, then faltered. “She—”
“Take it off!” I shouted. Joseph’s voice drilled in my brain. Anything worn a long time becomes like the person, absorbing thoughts, feelings.
“She said it would match the earrings—the hoops—”
I’d bought it for Mimi that day in Sighisoara, the first time we made love. Zahara had coveted it; and coveting me, had worn it for years maybe . . . Zahara possessed. Anything worn over time. The words swirled round and round. The same as if the she-demon had worn it, and hadn’t Lenore kissed my lips, put her tongue and wet mouth on mine? Anyeta would take the child’s body and I would be helpless, helpless and she would laugh when I cringed and whined and went mad with torment—and fucked her again, again.
“No,” I moaned. In my head I was hearing Anyeta’s threats and vicious taunts. I will wear your daughter like a bauble on a string around my neck.
“No.” I seized the chain between my fingers and ripped it from Lenore’s throat. Red marks like a line of tiny insect stings circled the tender flesh of her pale neck. I stood, stunned, the chain dangling loosely from my fingers, the silver crescent swinging to and fro.
“You’re drunk, Imre!” Anyeta suddenly shrieked.
But it wasn’t the drink, I knew—not really; it was her. “Not that drunk you goddamn bitch and you know it!”
Lenore’s eyes went wide, her mouth dropped in a quavering O. Crying, she snatched the silver pendant from me, then she gathered up her skirts and ran.
“Lenore, Lenore,” I screamed, tears flowing down my face. “Come back, don’t you see, this is what she wants. She’s trying to—Oh Jesus,” I cried, sinking to my knees, then burying my spinning head in my hands. The sun burned and licked my scalp. I heard voices droning like the buzz of flies. I sank backward against the hot grass.
“He’s drunk,” I heard Anyeta say in the pathetic voice of a long abused housewife. “He fights with me or my daughter . . . drinks until he passes out.”
“No,” I tried to say, but my tongue was thick in my mouth.
“Please, sir,” she said to my customer. “Won’t you help us, take a little pity. He’s been like this for days. I’m so afraid he hasn’t chosen well—that these grastende—these horses are riddled with disease—”
“Sound,” I murmured, trying to heave myself up. An invisible weight pinned me to the ground. The man—all patent leather and fancy jewels—I realized was a sham. He’d been looking for a drunk, a fool. Found me. And now Anyeta. No, by the bleeding, Christ, no!
“My team is here,” the customer said. “Will you trade?”
“Yes, oh yes.” I heard the eagerness in her voice.
And I knew what she was doing. I tried to protest, but I was powerless to stop it. Oh, God, it’s not the drink, I thought, and a few minutes later I heard the man driving my sound, healthy horses off, their hooves churning up the turf.
Anyeta led four black stallions close by. I saw their varnished hooves—slicked up and glossy as the man had been himself. My eye traveled upward. Anyeta held the leather bridle snugly, one hand moving over the soft dark hide. The lead horse gave a sudden snort and a huge runner of snot dripped from its nose. I saw it shining dully against the grass. Oh Jesus! He’s in the first stage of the sickness! I thought.
“What a shame,” Anyeta said, shaking her head. “A Lovari. A horse dealer. Should’ve known better. But he was drunk, I’ll say. So drunk he didn’t know.”
She flicked the hide lightly, and I saw its black flesh twitch as if it had been stung. The horse began to shiver. Its head drooped.
I watched in panic, my eyelids fluttering, my guts a nauseating spiral. Her glittering eyes met mine.
“No,” I tried to say, and suddenly I felt as if my head was gripped in the claws of a vise. I thought of Joseph pinned, unmoving, against the wall. “Christ, Christ,” I moaned.
Her face dissolved in a sly grin, her gaze never left mine, while her thin hand, with its long slim fingers disappeared up inside the black horse’s streaming nose. She withdrew it and I saw the coat of viscous yellow slime.
“I won’t get it,” she whispered. “Glanders. But if I did I would use the power to bring myself a healing.” She took two slow steps toward me.
And now my mouth was forcing itself open. As if inch by inch a stick pried my jaw wider, wider, wider. I could not move my lips. I heard a strange grunting noise—a terror stricken yarl—rising up and out of my paralyzed throat. No, I was shrieking, begging inwardly. Don’t! For Christ’s sake, don’t! Please, Anyeta. Don’t!
“Who owns the hand of the dead breeds destruction,” she said softly.
I saw her pale cupped fingers held above my nose, my throat, my aching open lips. Saw glittering mucous; it hung suspended like a single strand of spider web—dripping with thick foul-smelling venom. My gaze—my whole being—was fixed on that wet running drool.
“A smear,” she said. “A touch inside the nose, along the tongue—the same as eating death.”
No! I screamed soundlessly, I felt my eyes bulging out.
“I can even cure the team,” she said, “and drive us back to Hungary—daarling.”
No-ooooooo!
Anyeta’s eyes went as dull and black as the dead light in a cave. She raised her slip coated hand up. There was a stench from the yellowish clots, the ripe smell of bad cheese. I saw the evil rush of the glinting arc. Then her hand descended downward as quick and smooth as the executioner’s axe.
I closed my eyes in dread.
And her dripping hand—a wet, suffocating cloud—closed in on me.
-53-
Nyiregyhaza, Northeastern Hungary:
Late Spring, 1864
Three weeks after Anyeta infected me with glanders I found the first nodules inside my nose. I’d awakened early, pulled from a deep sleep with what felt like a bad cold: I was breathing heavily, I had chills and a fever, my eyes felt raw. I shuffled from the bed, and I was suddenly aware of a dry sensation inside my nostrils—as if tiny grains of hot sand had imbedded themselves under my skin. My steps quickened and I hurried to the mirror.
The light in the caravan was dim. I peered into the glass, craned my head up and down and side to side, trying to see inside my nostrils. I inserted a tentative finger and a sharp bolt of pain shot backward through my skull.
Shit, oh shit. I inched closer, leaning into the mirror and saw the nodules: hard, shiny, grayish. My heart sped up, my mouth dropped wide, and I saw thousands more coating my tongue, my lips, the inside of my cheeks.
I stared at the malignant rash of pinhead size bubbles; in the deepest recess of my brain, I knew they would grow and grow. Already the flesh they covered had a bloated look. I gasped, and my throat was stinging. I felt my heart double its pace. They were lining my throat, and with each breath I was drawing the disease deeper into my lungs. I wanted to vomit, suddenly caught on the memory of Anyeta’s slippery hand smearing the foul clots over my lips, sliding up inside my nose, moving over my tongue. The taste and smell of mucous—like something low and rotting—drowning me. My stomach roiled.
Easy, easy now, I told myself, slowly hunkering down then lowering my head between my knees. Got to keep it down, acid in your stomach, it’ll sting like fire, I thought drawing a light breath. A second pain roared inside and down my throat—as sharp and grating as if an invisible hand plied an emery board to the soft tissue. Dying, Christ you’re going to die! Easy now, I thought just as a mindless fear gripped me and I threw up; choking on curds of vomit, the burning sensation, an agony.
***
“I’m afraid,” I whispered.
Mimi turned my jaw delicately between her fingers and examined me. Her eyes were dark with sorrow.
That afternoon, the first of the nodules had swelled and burst with a tiny wet pop! that sounded like a miniature cork being slowly drawn from a glass bottle. My hand went to my upper lip and I f
elt a soft runny substance there.
“The horses,” I said, as she pushed a stack of washcloths that lay on the night table closer to me. Without looking I wiped what I guessed was thin pus from my fingers and mouth, then dropped the cloth into a straw basket. At the end of the day, I thought sickly, when the basket was filled with those wet odorous cloths, she’d burn it.
“Shhh,” she mimed, putting one finger to her lips. Her eyes said don’t think about it, about what’s going to happen. She held up a heavy white cup filled with soup but I shook my head, I didn’t want it.
“I’ve seen the way it goes,” I said, “with the horses—bodies shrunken to skeletons on their huge frames, the mass of lesions spreading, running one on the other. Until there’s no more flesh, only scabs and dark maroon weeping sores—”
Mimi put her hand up but I went on. “Even their breathing’s painful to watch. Their chests move in and out like slow leaking bellows. And the sound.” I paused, hearing that high thin shriek of air wheezing through lungs that were breaking down.
“It eats through the flesh,” I said. “We both know it.” I felt my mouth twist in a lopsided sneer. “And when the skin is gone, it attacks the cartilage, finds its way to organs and bones.” I shuddered, recalling a horse I’d seen in that final stage. “It didn’t resemble an animal, a living thing,” I rasped. “It was a heap of bleeding rags mounted on sticks.”
Stop, her eyes begged. Can’t you stop? But I couldn’t.
“There was no tongue to hang from its mouth, only a dark lump of ulcerated flesh. Its eyes were fused shut with greenish pus. I remember I was amazed, because somehow it had gotten back up on its tottery feet and it was listing to and fro; rocking back and forth, too weak to nicker its pain. All the other horses in the barn around it were dying, bleating in agony, their voices echoing off the rafters. Then it collapsed all at once—as if its legs had been cut off underneath it. It crashed into the side of the narrow wooden stall, two of its legs a splintering mass of bone and ruined flesh. It was dead—and the others dying—when they burned the barn around it.” I shut my eyes, beginning to cry.
“Shhh,” she soothed, her hands cool against my brow.
I felt a sudden wetness ooze under my lids. And I found myself praying inwardly with all my might that the sticky damp gliding down my cheeks was only tears—and not the gluey track of pus.
***
I lost all sense of time. The fever was on me again. Waves of chills followed by a fierce heat that burned into me steadily, until it felt like my bones were iron rods laid in a forge and glowing orange-white.
From far off, I heard Mimi pour water into a basin. She bathed me when she could to keep me comfortable. I felt her hands moving over me. She pulled the coverlet down. Then she began undoing the row of buttons on my nightshirt, her fingers dibbling over them one by one. Down and down. Her hands stopped suddenly, and she gave a short gasp.
My eyes flew open, I raised my head.
My chest was a muddy sea of flesh, studded here and there with crusting scabs like dull rubies weeping blood and thin yellowish fluid.
“My face,” I rasped. “What does my face look like?” I began to hack, my brain spinning. Was it this morning my wife showed me my face in the mirror? Yesterday? She broke it, I remember that. Smashed it right against the floor.
“My face? Is it worse?”
Mimi wouldn’t answer. She only leaned over me and shook her head, putting her cool hands down over my both wrists, pinning them to my sweaty sides in a gesture that meant lie quiet. She narrowed her eyes, her mouth shaped, Save your strength.
“Your hurting me,” I whispered, squirming. She stepped back, her face flushed red.
Me, she gestured. I did this to you—
“No,” I had a vague memory of her trying to heal me, then crying because her powers had fled. “No,” I coughed, and my hand went up automatically to cover my mouth and catch the sputum. I stopped. We saw it at the same time.
Joseph’s gold ring was buried in a puffy swell of flesh. I turned my palm over, angry reddish knots rose up, giving it a misshapen look. It was spreading to my hands. I looked up, my pulse ticking with vague dread like a slow watch. “How long? how long do I have?”
Mimi’s huge violet eyes said I had to hurry because there was something—something she wanted me to do.
My head was dull with fever, I couldn’t remember. “What do you want?”
Lenore, she mouthed, her face taking on a kind of urgency. I saw the terror in her eyes. She’s frightened for me, I thought, because there isn’t much time—
Mimi uttered a low cry. Her eyelids fluttered, and I was suddenly looking into Anyeta’s leering face.
She nodded toward the ulcers on my chest. “Coming along nicely now,” she said, her voice purring with satisfaction. She said it loud enough for Lenore to overhear; then she laughed softly, because what she really meant was that I was dying.
I felt my mind burning with anger.
“I brought you home to die,” she whispered, leaning over me. “Why don’t you do it? Give in, let it take you. Do you know what you look like?” Her obsidian eyes gleamed.
I shook my head. “Lenore,” I croaked, my tongue hot lead in my mouth.
“Mine for the taking. Didn’t Joseph tell you?” she mocked. “You were the only one standing in my way. And now of course you cannot even stand.”
Filthy bitch. I lunged toward her, then fell back, coughing, spraying droplets of blood over my chest, the quilts.
“It smells in here. It smells of your rotting flesh, Imre. Even outside, the breeze carries your stink to us in a gagging cloud. I don’t think Lenore will ever forget this stench.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Not even when I yag the caravan.”
“Why don’t you kill me and be done with it.”
“Soon. It will be soon,” she said, and I had the sense she meant more than my death. She stared at me.
I stared back through rheumy eyes. Daytimes, Anyeta was letting Mimi nurse me, but as the long afternoons dragged on, the light dying toward evening, she came out.
“Yes, I think Lenore will see you once more—just once before you die. She knows her mother is not afraid of falling sick; and I don’t think she will be either—”
“No—”
“If Lenore knew how sick her father was, I think she’d want to help,” Anyeta said, rubbing the purple bracelet of scar tissue that wound over Mimi’s wrist.
And then before I could answer, she was gone, and I lay there, knotting my lumpen hands uselessly. “The scar,” I whispered, thinking of Anyeta caressing it so reverently. Terror seized me, I began to shake. I knew what Mimi wanted. She wanted me to claim the hand of the dead.
I craned my head and saw the copper box with the glass top lying on the low table where my wife left it for me. The dried wrinkled flesh of the hand was black with age, a vague shape against the maroon velvet. Anyeta missed it in the shadows, but now it seemed very bright to me. I sat up, staring. The copper took on a sharper gleam, beginning to be edged with a fantastic greenish light. It seeped up through the glass, and now the hand itself was luminescent. It flickered and danced like a firefly.
“Claim me,” it whispered. It began to sing, a soft thrumming sound. I saw a moonlit garden where a golden fountain played in a yellow mist over the white, waxy blooms; where naked women strolled, their eyes filled with hunger for me—
I heard Anyeta calling Lenore for dinner. The two of them scampered up the stairs of Joseph’s rickety caravan and went in. I heard Anyeta rolling up the canvas sidewalls.
The wind carried the sound of their voices, gossiping over a long supper.
I swallowed. Oh Christ, oh saints, I’m cold. I huddled under the blankets, drifting in and out of an uneasy sleep that was more delirium than easeful dreams, while Anyeta and my daughter talked and talked—of love and illness and healing—and the June wind brought me the low sound of their voices, late into the night.
***
/> “What did you do today, Lenore?” Anyeta asked, and I heard the soft chink of silverware.
“Went to the village—”
“Didn’t I tell you not to go there? Your father is sick—if they find out we’ll be hounded out of town, maybe put in a jail.” A glass rattled and banged against a plate.
“It was only to see the priest—”
“Priests!” Anyeta snorted.
“I’m glad I went,” Lenore said, “and look, Mother, look what he gave me.” The light sound of her small feet hurrying. A dresser drawer banged open, slammed shut. “See, it’s holy water. From Lourdes.” Her voice took on a sweeter resonance. “There’s a grotto there—with red roses that bloom in December and a blue lake with miraculous powers. This cave—it’s filled with crutches, thousands and thousands of them. Men and women and little crippled children bathe in that blessed water and the Holy Virgin cures them—”
“Your father’s dying, Lenore!”
“I know it.” There was the sound of quiet weeping. “I’ve prayed to the Holy Spirit . . . and Saint Sarah—because she was a gypsy, I’ve prayed to her, too. And after supper I’m going to go inside the caravan and say the prayer to the Blessed Mother—and sprinkle all this clear healing water—”
“It won’t work—”
“The priest said—”
“Priests. I never put much stock in the clergy, Lenore.”
***
I’m delirious—or dreaming, I think, hearing the door swing open. I can see Lenore’s silhouette; the moon glows white and round over her shoulder.
“Papa?” she whispers. Her feet make a soft scraping sound against the threshold. She takes two steps into the room, her heavy skirts are rustling. “Papa, are you asleep?”
“Ugh,” she says suddenly and I hear her trying to stifle her gagging. She pounds her chest, her hands flail. I see them moving like pale silver fish in the murky light. She is breathing through her mouth.
The Gentling Box Page 30