The Gentling Box

by Lisa Mannetti

  “Are you awake? I came to help you.” The moon picks out a glass vial in her hand. It glimmers when she holds it up. The cork disappears in her pocket.

  She tips the bottle against the pads of her fingers, like a woman coaxing expensive perfume from a narrow-necked flask. Lenore flicks the droplets gently. I hear them pattering against the floor as she moves through the kitchen toward the top of the stairs. Her voice is low, barely above a whisper. “Holy Mother, I humbly beseech you from the bottom of my heart to hear my prayer.”

  She moves more quickly, leather heels tapping down the steps, across the darkened room. And now I hear the first droplets falling on the bed sheet.

  The glass bottle tips downward, there is a minute gurgling, and I would smile if I could because my daughter, Lenore, has saved most of her precious holy water for my tortured body.

  I see the shadowy cloud of her thick hair, her head bent at a slight angle, her hand held aloft as she walks up and down the length of the bed, christening me. I cannot really feel it, except as a vague dampness, but I know by the sound, she is drenching me in the cool liquid.

  “Oh Most Blessed Mother, I place this cause in your hands. Let my father be healed.”

  Her voice is a soothing murmur as pretty as a lullaby, I think, easing me toward a tunnel that is dark and inviting. Dreamless, perhaps—

  ***

  “Papa?”

  Lenore is whispering, and I realize there haven’t been any sounds for what seems like a long time, and I wonder if it’s the same dream or another. I hear scratching noises like a match against the stove. The dream shifts in time, it’s morning. I’m bathed in blinding sunlight—

  —The light! Not sunlight! It’s a candle!

  I throw my arm across my burning eyes, the light is a wavy, sickening prism searing me with lancing pain.

  Lenore screams. Through a blur, I see her hands turn into claws and in her terror she is shredding the soft white skin of her cheeks. Three red lines of blood well up, two on the right, one on the left. She is shrieking louder and louder, her fingers tearing at her lip.

  “No! No! Poppie! No!”

  Her terrified gaze lights on the bottle of holy water at the foot of the bed, and she seizes it. I see it hurling through the air. It smashes against the wall high over my head. Fragments of glass suddenly spray over me, and the noise makes me sit up in alarm. My feverish brain is turning round and round. It feels hot and stretched—as thin as copper wire. I’m so sick, I think. Delirious. I don’t want visitors, not even Lenore.

  “Please go,” I say. I move one leg sluggishly. I will see her to the door, I think incoherently. Her dark eyes gleam with terror, she takes two nervous steps backward toward the stairs, hands hidden behind her.

  I lurch out of the bed.

  “Your mouth, oh dear God, your poor mouth,” she breathes, backing up.

  “Please go, now,” I say, at the same instant I hear my voice for the bubbling clotty thing it is: An oaty rumbling, as if I were sucking wet porridge instead of speaking.

  “Pleash . . . gaw,” I mumble, the sound cutting deeper, slicing through layers of delirium. I suddenly catch sight of myself—like a fading ghost—in the window glass. A balding, scabrous head welded onto tottering sticks. The lids are half-eaten away and I stare into a pair of crusty burning eyes, glistening, luminous above the blackened pit that used to be my nose and mouth.

  My tongue is a rotting stalk. My teeth are worn to rounded nubs. Through the crumbling flesh, I see part of my dirty jaw bone. The roof of my mouth has gone . . . mushy . . . the holes that were my nostrils are sinking down and caving in—like a grinning face carved on a burnt out Halloween pumpkin that crumples down and sags in on itself.

  “Ahhh,” I moan. “Pleash . . . gaww . . . ” I beg again; the motion causes a flaring red pustule to burst and a noxious yellow fluid spills out of me because there are no lips to catch it. It drips onto the floor with a thick splat.

  I open my mouth to scream and I feel it filling with blood. There is no sound beyond a rusty caw. Instead, Lenore screams for both of us, and then she runs.

  ***

  I amble back to bed, to the dirty sheets. I shake them lightly, dimly watching dark red scabs bouncing off and scattering on the floor. But even that feeble movement is enough to bring on coughing. I try for the straw basket, miss, and now there’s a puddle of blood on the floor.

  I lay down. Lenore’s screams subside. I stare at the moon through the open door. Even if it’s June it’s cold, I think, and I wish someone would shut it. The drafts make me shiver.

  In Joseph’s caravan, the rolled canvas flaps like a sail. I hear their voices on the wind that sweeps and sweeps across the vast distance of the plains. Lenore wants to know if her mother is sure, very sure—

  “Yes,” the she-demon Anyeta answers for my wife.

  “And it—this charm—can heal him, truly?”

  “Yes. You can save him, Lenore.”

  My eyes fly open. Something that feels like a steel pike rams my chest. Oh, Christ. In my mind’s eye I see Mimi weeping fit to break her heart. Telling me—this morning or yesterday or a week ago—the time was short . . . Christ, Christ, I should have done it! The copper box with the hand is lying on the table.

  “If I’m brave . . . ”

  “A cut, here, and you can claim its power.”

  “The scar . . .”

  “A scar is only a scar. A moment’s pain for your father’s life.”

  “The mulengi maulo, the hand of the dead,” Lenore agrees, getting to her feet.

  “A miracle that’s not a lie.”

  In my caravan the open door creaks, swaying lightly in the wind. Never, I’ll never get it locked in time! I think wildly. My pulse is suddenly racing, and in my terror I’m able to wrench myself out of the bed.

  I hear Lenore’s feet whispering through the grass.

  I crawl for the door, my hands and knees scuttling over the wooden boards. In my bleary-eyed state it seems farther than it is. I creep toward it, ignoring the pain that is rumbling up my arms and shooting from my raw kneecaps straight to my hips. The entry wavers, glowing with eerie moonlight like the throat into hell.

  Sweet Bleeding Christ, let me get there, get the fucking thing locked!

  Her hand slides onto the banister, her foot over the first step.

  I scoot forward with a half-lunge, and I feel the cold round metal knob—in the cup of my blistered palm—like a blessing. I slide the bolt, hear it rattle through the iron ring, slurring over the wooden jamb.

  I turn around, leaning clumsily against the wood like a falling drunk, panting heavily. Thank Christ, oh thank Christ.

  In the dark, like a green ship’s lantern on the foggy sea, the hand begins to glow.

  -54-

  Calling my name, Lenore shakes the knob on the other side. Once, twice. Then she is racing back past the low glare of the campfire to tell Anyeta the door is locked. The sorceress will open it with a flick of her mind.

  I use my shoulders, pushing myself away, taking heavy faltering steps, grazing the walls. I leave smears and blood on the chairs, the kitchen table.

  A knife winks green on the counter, its blade catching the weird glint of the pulsating light. My breath is coming hard, my fingers are clumsy and stubborn when I try to pick it up. It gets away from me and plummets from the counter. For Lenore, I think, and get it in my shaking hands.

  Voices raised; Anyeta will be here soon. The knob will rattle once. There will be a sharp flash of electric blue light, the dizzy smell of ozone. In that one instant, the blasted door will slam wide open, the metal handle crashing backward into the scant lining of plaster. The doorwill rock madly, bouncing against the punctured wall of the caravan.

  “Imre,” the hand croons softly as I move toward the stairs. Mimi was naked when she claimed it, I suddenly remember. I rip at the nightshirt, tearing my flesh along with the cloth, then use the knife to cut the buttons and it flaps around the jutting bones of my h
ips.

  Three steps down and I am in the bedroom, bending over the table, my hand going the fertile green of a jungle inside the spill of vibrant light.

  “Imre! Imre!” Anyeta’s voice is close. Footsteps running up the stairs.

  I spring the catch. The glass top jitters up like a jack-in-the-box. The hand glows against the velvet. There is the smell of lilies, tuberoses, jasmine. Garden scents. Sweet lulagis, Imre my love.

  I kneel on the floor, holding the knife over the rotting wrist I’ve exposed against the boards like a surgeon at his operating table. I raise my right arm, hoping to get all my weight and strength behind one heavy chopping blow. The knife comes whistling down like a meat cleaver.

  “Open this goddamn door!” The knob rattles. “You stinking piece of shit, I’ll blast you blind!”

  Take me now, lovemylove. Oh Imre, the hand calls, May kali i muri may gugli avela . . . Ah, the darker the berry the sweeter its juice . . . Imre

  “IMRE-E-E-E!” Anyeta screams.

  “I claim it,” I whisper at the same instant the metal bites through skin, bone, wood. There is blood, and it geysers up in a dark red fountain. But oh, I tell you, the sound of Anyeta’s frustrated shrieks is a heavenly music, and I never felt the pain.

  -55-

  Now there is all the time in the world. Now I can keep the door locked, keep her out. The jagged bracelet of scar tissue circling my wrist is thick, lumpy and purplish—but it is the only scar. The disease is gone. The rest of me is healed, whole, unspoiled.

  I light all the lamps in the caravan, boil water in a kettle, bathe, then dress myself in clean clothes. The open box that holds the hand of the dead sends its heady aroma into the room, overpowering the stench from my sickness.

  I rummage in the cupboards for cheese, bread, wine and make a light supper. Never has food or drink tasted this way—as if all the warm, good flavors in the world—grapes and salty rennet and delicate yeast are exploding on my tongue. It’s because I was sick, I think; then I feel an inner twitch and wonder: Is it because I claimed the power of the hand?

  All at once, the wood and plaster walls of my caravan are wavering, turning into a formless mist. I can see Anyeta brooding, pacing back and forth inside Joseph’s caravan. I feel her mind seething. Lenore is asleep. The cunning old choovahanee hasn’t given up on the prize; if she could find some other way to convince Lenore—to trick her—to claim the hand of the dead, she could possess my daughter. Mimi is barely a shell, she thinks; it will be easy.

  A sudden fury seizes me. I have power, now I want revenge. For sending me those obscene dreams; for corrupting my daughter; for possessing my wife, for turning her into a ghoul feasting on Constantin and Joseph—on their rotting corpses; revenge for the foul plague—for all of it! I narrow my eyes into a squint and stare at her. My mind teems with bloody fantasies. I want to rip Anyeta to shreds, I want to hear her moan in a begging voice, to tear her apart with my bare hands—

  I pause, catching sight of the old man’s ring shining in the lamp-light. And it seems to me I hear his voice cutting through the bubbling rage inside me. “Think of Mimi,” the voice murmurs. “Don’t use it for that—not revenge! Use the power to send the sorceress to sleep, Imre. Use it just this once . . . Once and then perhaps once more; because it’s an evil thing, corrupting its owner over time. An obsession that eats at the mind and heart—like the worm of disease.”

  He’s right about Mimi. I feel the blood draining from my face, my anger goes flat and stale. “All right,” I whisper. My vision blurs, and I peer through the thin haze into his barrel-topped caravan, sending Anyeta into a dreamless sleep. She sits woozily on the bed, then crumples all at once, dark hair streaming over the quilt. Her breathing is slow and rhythmic. I see the soft rise and fall of her chest, her lips flutter very lightly. The demon is sleeping, and now I call forth my wife.

  ***

  We sit, Mimi and I, holding hands across the table in our caravan. I’m reminded briefly of the night all of this began; the chill autumn night we learned Anyeta was dying in Romania and had sent for us. Mimi’s shadow is dark and tall against the wall, her hands are pale in the lamplight. She smiles at me; it’s a tired smile, I think.

  “Anyeta will—” Mimi breaks off, clearing her throat. She’s been mute so long she’s not used to speaking. I realize her throat hurts, her voice sounds dry, dusty. She starts again, her hand pressing mine. “Anyeta will not rest.”

  “What of it? I’ll batter that bitch into gravel, I’ll grind her into dust.” I smile, tip back in my chair. I’m very proud of myself. I’ve freed Mimi of that hideous spell, of the illusion she was a cringing beast.

  “No,” she says, nervously biting her lip. Mimi’s eyes are very dark, the color shimmering between violet and a deep brown. She gets up; I think she’s going to pace, but she comes and sits on my lap, placing her hands on my shoulders. I caress her waist. “Don’t you see? Even now? She’s in me, Imre,” Mimi says, touching her heart lightly. “She’s sleeping—but it’s the sleep of some foul worm that grows fat even when it dreams. And I feel it, here.” She touches her heart again. “She’s stronger than you or me.”

  “Her power increased over time, mine will too—”

  “Spells and counterspells and what then? You’ll be just like her—”

  Just like her. I feel my heart dropping in my chest. The hand is an obsessive thing that corrupts . . . Joseph’s words toll dully in my brain like bells made of lead.

  “No, you’re wrong,” I say. “I’m not like her—and neither are you! It’s the goddamn guilt!” I shout. “Why can’t you understand she did it! All of it—killed Joseph, fed on animals, on children—”

  “She is me and I am her. More and more we merge. She is sucking me up. And there’s so little of me left. I’m dying, Imre. The day is coming—soon—when I won’t exist. Lenore isn’t safe with me, either.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say, “I have you, all I want is to hold you, to kiss you, to make love to you—”

  “Then make love to me, Imre. Make love and free me.” She touches her lips softly to mine. “The power of the hand is a terrible thing. Joseph knew it, he never claimed it. I didn’t want this for you, I didn’t. Our fate is the same—lying in a stinking grave; seething, screaming . . . forever . . . ”

  The hand. I swallow, feeling cold earth pressing down on me, suffocating me; see red graveworms gnawing my flesh—

  “Make love to me,” Mimi says again. Her small hand knots into a fist and she strikes her chest in the center; in the place that lies just above her heart.

  ***

  It is the last time. We are everything to one another. Man and woman, lover and beloved, husband and wife. The world is our universe, our playground, I think, looking up at her, at her small kitten-shaped face. Thin and haggard as she is, she’s beautiful when passion takes her.

  She rocks lightly on me, and never, never has her skin felt so soft. It glows under my fingertips, warm and delicate. There’s a musky scent rising from her and I drink it in, kissing her breasts, her mouth. I taste her lush saltiness and she mine. We love and love.

  Perhaps, I think, because I’ve claimed the power my strength flows into her, and together we’re driving the she-demon deeper and deeper into some dark recess where she’s no more than a speck, a mote . . . nothing. Our bodies cleave, rising and falling in the rhythms of love. It seems to me I’m on the verge of discovering some previously unsuspected and wondrous secret.

  Then, something that feels like a door or window inside my mind suddenly slides open or up, letting in a kind of soft yellow light like summer moonglow. It’s as if the moon was a globe or a round Chinese lantern you could hang in your bedroom, just above your head—

  Above me Mimi sways, her eyes closed, her thick lashes fluttering against her cheek, her expression as mysterious and graceful as a Madonna’s. I have a sense of an impending vision, a future free of the she-demon. And in our sweet union, in my mind’s eye, there is only
my wife, there is only Mimi:

  It’s five years from now and we’re done with gypsy madness, gypsy ways, the endless roaming she hated. We have a house, a cottage really, and I see her sitting in the blue brocade wing chair near the window of the small cozy parlor. I see the sunlight gleaming on the polished floor, a wool rug twined with ivy leaves. A carved clock ticks on the mantelpiece. She’s singing, her small mouth touched with the beginnings of a smile. And now I see her slippered foot tapping out the tune softly, and looking closer I see her arms are cradling an infant. Brown skinned, with the fat reddish cheeks of a peony. He squirms, I see his head cant back, the thick mat of black hair on the crown. He waves an arm, opens his mouth to bawl for his supper. Mimi laughs at him, gives him milk from a bottle with a rag wick in it. The sound of his fierce sucking is very loud, and she tells him that even if he is a very greedy noisy kind of boy, she loves him. He’s an angel. She leans over, crinkles her nose, gives him a smacking kiss at the top of his forehead. “Ion,” she croons.

  There are tiny lines around her eyes; I see them when she grins, see the wisps of gray in the once-glossy black hair. At night in bed we laugh about the gray streaks, and always I tell her it’s about goddamn time she caught up. I was getting sick of being the only one making a count in the mirror every morning. She counted for a while too, then gave it up—until, she said, giggling, counting would be easy again. And I knew she meant when there was only a sprinkling of black left to stand out against the white.

  Ion, I recall, was the name of the boy she gave her gold anklet to in memory of that other lost baby, Elena. Yes, I think, a child to erase the years of sorrow, to free us both from the spell of the past—the horrors and evils, both natural and unnatural. And if now there are lines in that face, the face of the woman that I love, I say let them wear deeper and deeper over time; because that other line—the scar around her wrist—has dwindled and faded into insignificance.

  Now I see Lenore entering the room, bending to kiss her mother’s cheek, to squeeze and pat her brother’s toes. She’s grown up, I think, really grown up, she’s lost her girlish chubbiness, but not her fascination with the Empress—