Oneiron

by Laura Lindstedt

  And thus Rosa’s voice begins to ring out. It resonates in the ambulance but really somewhere else. It resonates as they move, but not in the vehicle approaching the hospital. It resonates in a rhythm that makes Nina, Wlibgis, Shlomith, Ulrike, Polina, and Rosa Imaculada begin to sway. The pulse joins the delicate melody and injects its own syncopations, but it doesn’t destroy the song, doesn’t spoil the sound that had once long ago comforted little Rosa, then little Davi, and now would comfort Nina, little Ninjuška. Nina who must gather all her courage and find the strength to leave.

  Nigue, nigue, ninhas

  tão bonitinhas

  Macamba viola di pari e ganguinhas

  Ê ê ê ê, imbê, tumbelá!

  Musangolá quina quinê . . .

  Nina squeezes her eyes shut tight and finally pulls her hands out of her hair. The familiar rhythm, a pulse like the beating of a heart multiplies a thousand times, begins to make them sway faster. They surrender, and no one says anything about raising arms. The terror has disappeared from Nina’s face. She knows, just as naturally as Maimuna had known, what she has to do.

  She bends down and, eyes still shut, kisses her own lips.

  Farewell, Nina!

  We’ll be coming too.

  I feel like I’ll be next . . .

  Was that why you sang?

  I feel that way.

  You have a very unique voice, Rosa.

  Thank you.

  It fit this situation perfectly.

  Thank you. But I don’t believe we disappear completely.

  I hope you’re right!

  So not farewell but until we meet again, Nina!

  Au revoir, Nina!

  Brain-dead mother gives birth to twins

  Nina Pignard of Marseilles, who was pronounced brain dead a month ago, gave birth to twins two days ago. Thirty-five-yearold Pignard was kept on life support for more than a month in order to give the fetuses sufficient time to develop for life outside the womb.

  On the day of her accident, October 27, Pignard was on her way to Saint-Joseph Hospital. She was changing from the tram to the metro at Gare de Noailles when she appeared to trip and hit her head on the side of the oncoming train.

  According to eyewitnesses, she had been running even though the metro hadn’t arrived at the platform yet. “People noticed because of her condition,” said Marseilles traffic police commissar, Christophe Benoit. “Metro trains arrive at platforms going 40 kilometers an hour. If you stick your head in front of one, something bad is going to happen.”

  The babies, a girl and a boy, were born at twenty-five weeks by Caesarian section, each weighing less than 900 grams. They are currently receiving treatment in the neonatal intensive care unit at Saint-Joseph Hospital. According to Charlotte Vermette, a neonatologist specializing in premature births, their chances of survival without injury are good.

  The Pignard family have recently been subjected to another tragedy when the brain-dead woman’s brother-in-law was abducted in Mali. “The kidnapping happened the day after Nina died,” said Pignard’s mother-in-law, Michelle Pignard. The family has been receiving professional help to weather these crises.

  The fate of the abducted brother remains unclear, but the French Foreign Ministry is working overtime to resolve the situation. The father of the abducted man, Julien Pignard, CEO of the Sodexo Group, numbers among the richest men in France with total assets exceeding 5.3 billion euros.

  However, according to information received by Le Monde, the abduction seems to have no connection to the Pignard family fortune. “My son was in the wrong place at the wrong time, just like Nina,” says Michelle Pignard.

  At the moment, the family is focused on the welfare of the babies.

  “We used to rub Nina’s belly and talk to the babies. That caused very conflicting feelings. We were always keenly aware that the babies’ birth would mean the end of her life,” said Nina’s husband, Jean-Philippe Pignard. “But life has to go on. We’re making funeral arrangements, getting the house ready for the babies, and waiting for my brother to be freed. What else can we do?”

  Natalie Bacqué

  ELECTRIC BLUE: IF YOU COULD DIE OF ANGER

  Vaarwel, Wlibgis!

  This isn’t where I thought we’d be next.

  No!

  So this is where our campfire came from . . .

  ‘Our’!?

  Your hair, Wlibgis.

  Wlibgis lies in a hospital bed with the wig on her head. The artificial hair is askew, the parting off center, the bangs straggly. Wlibgis’s mouth hangs slightly open, jerky breaths, small wheezes, involuntary coughs, and odd squeaks coming from it. Wlibgis doesn’t appear anguished, but she is gray, pallid, and waxy. This makes the fibers spread out on the pillow appear all the more fiery red.

  Why are you wearing a wig?

  In that state!

  I wanted to. I felt like a potato without hair.

  The nurses had tried to take the wig off Wlibgis’s head as she fell asleep. They wanted to brush it and put it in the closet with all of her other belongings. Whether it was in the way of a cannula or bathing the patient, the hair was always unruly. But every time they touched her wig, Wlibgis snapped out of her morphine haze. She would cast an icy gaze at the nurses, and they would let go instantly, take a step back, and leave her hair alone, because that terrible gaze was not of this world. It came from the other side, where this miserable woman had apparently decided to take her wig. Let her take it. They didn’t want to touch the thing any more and tried to pretend it didn’t exist, but it was impossible because it blazed in their peripheral vision no matter what they were doing. If they tried to look Wlibgis in the face, there was only orange hair, hair hair hair, a demonic gleaming frame around all that pallor and gray.

  My wig is from the best wigmaker in Zwolle, where all the local professional actors go.

  . . .the Borough Park Hasids have much nicer ones . . .

  What?

  Pardon me, Wlibgis. Your hair is excellent, but it’s just a fact that the Hasidim have the best wigs in the world.

  Who?

  The Hasidim. Orthodox Jews. Their women have to hide their hair after they come of age. But they’re clever, so they hide their hair under magnificent wigs.

  But is that . . . a little hypocritical?

  It depends how you look at it. I think it’s just creative problem-solving. Have you heard of eruvin? An eruv is a ritual, symbolic enclosure that Orthodox Jews like the Hasidim use to surround the areas in which they live. They have them in New York, they have them in Jerusalem. It means that on Shabbat, Jews can move around in the area surrounded by the eruv wire and transport the things they need from place to place.

  Where does the wire run?

  On the ground?

  No, it’s in the air. An eruv system vaguely resembles electrical poles. An outsider wouldn’t necessary notice the wires if she didn’t know to look.

  Is it problem-solving if the problem is self-imposed?

  It isn’t self-imposed. The Shabbat commandments are dictated in the Law. But interpretation is allowed.

  You Jews are masters of that!

  Evasion, circumvention, a little good-natured diversion . . . all within the framework of the Law.

  And so inside the area outlined by that wire, you can do anything?

  Of course not. For example, you can’t open an umbrella. That resembles pitching a tent too strongly. So it’s sort of like building.

  But if it rains when you go outside you can still hold a newspaper over your head, right?

  Yes.

  Ridiculous!

  You’re all insane!!

  There are other limitations too. For example, you can’t play sports that require making holes or gouging ruts in the ground. So golf is forbidden.

  And sledding on a sledding hill!

  And on Shabbat you can only do a sport for the pleasure of moving, not to improve your health.

  But with a sled you aren’t . . .

&n
bsp; Tell me, Shlomith, who checks whether an athlete has the right motives?

  The Law is the Law, and it resides within those who believe in the Law, the same way your heart resides within you.

  Did you live inside of that kind of fence?

  No, not that kind. My family wasn’t very religious.

  Do you think that sort of thing is sensible?

  Or those wigs. Why isn’t their own hair good enough? It’s a sin to pretend with things like that! Think about how it makes those of us feel who lose our hair because of disease!

  There it is again: the wig. Wlibgis’s blazing, magic hair, which for a while has helped her be something other than sick and bald, something other than the old Wlibgis, a punching bag. So how does she feel about the idea that healthy women cover their own beautiful hair with wigs because of some silly tradition? It can’t be worse than how someone who lost a leg would feel about cosmetic amputation or a cleft lip patient about tongue splitting, but it still feels unjust and wrong, just like cancer in general.

  Ladies. We’re in Wlibgis’s time now.

  Suddenly from Polina’s direction an unusually heavy idea forms, which ends all the other agitation. The emptiness does not stay empty long since an observation, in the form of a sharp, indignant exclamation whose origin no one can quite be sure, soon sprouts from the silence. No one has time to perceive the direction from which it had come. It just erupts from somewhere, spreading and immediately feeling like their very own:

  Haven’t you noticed that Wlibgis is able to communicate with us?

  And truly: Wlibgis, ravaged by cancer and robbed of the power of speech, has been participating in the exchange of ideas for some time now, just like everyone else! For example, in the desert Wlibgis clearly, without faltering, expressed the following questions: Are you afraid? Is it coming from the ground? Now, Maimuna? In the ambulance, Wlibgis started arguing with Nina: If I were you, I’d close my eyes and let go. If I were you . . . If Wlibgis were Nina, she never would have run at that metro train. If Wlibgis had been Nina, she would have guarded her life to the last, because look at what Nina had been: young, healthy, two babies on the way, money to burn, and a man in the house. But Wlibgis is Wlibgis, and now for the first time she is an equal participant in the conversation. The women can ask her anything, and she can answer. She can talk, and they can listen.

  . . . Wlibgis seems like a stick-in-the-mud . . .

  Ulrike!!

  I’m sorry!!

  My goodness, Ulrike!

  I didn’t mean to offend! The cancer and the hospital . . .

  Yes, yes. What does the life of one boring, cancerous monstrosity matter.

  Wlibgis, I didn’t mean it! Forgive me.

  This thing, that Wlibgis was finally “talking” to them, and they hadn’t realized it, was worth at least one horrified wave of guilt. And Ulrike wasn’t the only one to blame. No one had been interested in Wlibgis.

  Wlibgis, this feels so natural to all of us, you participating. Am I right?

  Yes!

  Much more natural than being jerked around like this!

  First the Sahara Desert, then an ambulance . . .

  Careening along the streets of Marseilles with blaring sirens . . .

  Just think if you had to tell someone else about all of this!

  Why would that be so hard? Here, I’ll try: “We travel back and forth across the world visiting each other’s places of death and then moving on . . .”

  And one of us is always left behind . . .

  True! One got a bullet in the brain, and then there were six!

  A subway train stung one, and then there were five.

  What are you saying? Really, that’s too much.

  A second choked his little self . . .

  A big bear hugged a third . . .

  A fourth got frizzled up . . .

  What the hell are you taking about, Shlomith? Polina?

  Then there’s that strange one . . .

  Yes, how did it go . . . ?

  A yellow herring swallowed one . . .

  Red!

  No, yellow.

  Red.

  Yellow.

  Red.

  Yellow! In Russian that part of the rhyme is translated . Definitely not . I’m sure of it.

  What are you talking about?!

  “Ten Little Indians.”

  Who are they?

  We’re all Indians in the face of death . . .

  Well, yes. Let’s get back to the subject.

  The thing from which the conversation constantly slips into trivialities lies breathing ever more haltingly on the hospital bed. Wlibgis clearly doesn’t have long to live. Although blithe chatter, prattle, and yacking seems to entice some of the women with increasing purposefulness, as if they are completely unable to keep their thoughts in check, some of them thankfully understand that this cannot go on. That self-discipline is necessary now: Wlibgis has to be escorted beyond the veil with due decorum.

  Wlibgis, tell us, do we have time?

  What do you mean?

  I mean the moment when you have to fling yourself . . .

  Or do something else before your final departure.

  Ah, time. All I have is time . . . I’m leaving after a protracted illness, isn’t that dull? Be careful not to fall asleep . . .

  Don’t be angry, Wlibgis.

  We’ve acted poorly. Forgive us.

  Wlibgis, you know best whether we need to hurry. If there’s time, you could tell us something?

  For instance, tell us what kind of life you had!

  And how you liked us?

  Yes, did you enjoy our company?

  Did you understand a word of what we were talking about when we were where we came from?

  Did you know English?

  At the moment of death, there might be better things to do than quiz the departing about her foreign language skills. There the women float around gray, pale Wlibgis, who is barely conscious any more. So did she ever learn English during her life? Well, Wlibgis knows a word or two, just like Rosa and Maimuna. But because she, unlike them, hasn’t been able to express anything verbally, they realize suddenly, at the last moment, that she is more valuable than anyone. Not for herself, of course, but as a mirror. There can never be too many mirrors. Not even in these circumstances. Have you enjoyed our company? Traces of narcissism cling tight to a person. How did you like us? Approaching death doesn’t ennoble anyone, even if they are all plunging one by one into nothingness.

  Wlibgis controls herself remarkably well. Although she has never practiced meditation, somehow she suddenly succeeds in emptying her mind. She concentrates and concentrates, gathering strength. Recklessly she prolongs the silence.

  The colossal hospital complex, which resembles a giant mouth organ, sprawls along Groot Weezenland. If the women had swayed over to the window, and if the blinds had been open, as they waited for Wlibgis’s answer they could have admired the eight-story view of the Zwarte Water, one of Zwolle’s numerous rivers, which in this part of the city had been shaped into the form of a star. The shape was from a time when the river in question had not been a river but a water barrier constructed to protect the city and followed the pure lines of the Dutch version of a type of bastion fortification originally developed in Italy.

  But the blinds are closed, so the slanting rays of the morning sun won’t bother Wlibgis as she lies in bed. Only a few beams of light find their way through small holes into the dim room, which is primarily lit by a lava lamp that resembles a space shuttle and which Melinda brought to help her grandmother feel better. “It’s fun to look at, and it helps you fall asleep.” In the glass capsule of the lava lamp, in the turquoise oil-based liquid, electric blue drops of wax form in various sizes and shapes, and Wlibgis did like watching their magma-like movements before falling asleep.

  Ulrike glances toward the window. What kind of place are they in? Is there a city outside? This has to be a city, since the room is a large hospital room. What
is the view like? Are leaves in the trees? Is snow on the ground? There is light, so at least it is day. But they can’t open the blinds. They can’t do anything worldly, not pick up the ballpoint pen on the floor, not stroke Wlibgis’s fragile face framed by her wig. Only the floating Wlibgis herself can touch the Wlibgis lying in the bed, and she only at the very final moment, perhaps.

  The unease begins to swell. Polina, Shlomith, Ulrike, and Rosa Imaculada wait for Wlibgis’s answer, swaying, each flickering in a different spot. The awkward question, Do you know English? echoes in the space like the mouth-smacking of a predatory bat, like a quickening, crackly, ping-ponging sound pulse. They never should have asked that. Now that question haunts them whatever they try to think about. Its cracking had covered everything except when that other, perhaps even more perturbing question, which they had conjured, flitted in from the periphery. Of course they hadn’t been able to restrain themselves: How did you like us?

  I actually liked Nina most. Now don’t be offended. It’s simply the truth, and you were the ones who asked. I wished I could have had a daughter like her. Nina was ordinary in a pleasant way and seemed to have a good head on her shoulders, while the rest of you . . . especially you, Shlomith, and also you, Polina. You two are so full of yourselves. The way you talk, and you talk a lot, tells me you consider yourselves better than other people. You seem to think you have special rights. To tell the truth, Shlomith, your thinness disgusts me. I can’t approve of the way you’ve intentionally put yourself in that condition. You, Polina, love the sound of your own voice far too much. I’m sorry, but no one can stand listening to you! Back when my voice worked, I only spoke as much as necessary. I think that’s a good baseline. You shouldn’t overburden people. It isn’t polite. And then the rest of you. Ulrike: I have to admit you irritate me. You’re impertinent. No, let me continue! I know full well that you’re still sorry for that stray thought of yours. I forgive you. Don’t worry about it any more. You’re right: I’m not interesting. I tried once. I made myself up like other women do every day, found myself a man, and so forth. And look what came of it. Only trouble. I’m boring and normal, and a little ugly, but what about it? In this world there’s one person I love and one person who loves me. Is that sufficient for you on the subject of “Wlibgis”? Well then, let’s continue the circle. Rosa, you threw far too many fits, but I understand you. You have that Latin-American temperament, so what can you do? And besides, you’re actually wiser than the others, since you taught us that word. Is it your people’s way of saying “Open sesame”? Because of you at least we got out of that horrible place. So thank you, Rosa! And finally, Maimuna. Pretty girl. She could have become a skilled gymnast. She had a good body. I don’t have anything bad to say about her. Shame she died that way.