Old Loyolo saw this, and beckoned me forward. I began to hop toward him, even though I felt weak. Better for whatever sickness I carried to be surrounded among the old, than among the chicks. We tease them, but they are all the future we will ever have, and the only ones who will remember our stories.
“I will tell a story,” announced one of the chicks, an arrogant male named Zubalo.
Zubalo, Zubalo, cheered the other chicks, as though their approbation meant anything at all. And yet when Old Loyolo looked at him, Zubalo did not cower, did not hide his eyes under his wing.
“You will?” Old Loyolo cawed in annoyance. “Are you sure? Are you ready? Have you come to me in humility, to practice?”
“Who made you master of the stories?” the young chick said. “Who said that you could choose who tells stories, and who does not?”
Old Loyolo jerked his beak in the air, and Zubalo’s tail feathers shuddered. “Who am I? Who am I?” The old crow danced on the girl’s knee, hopping and shifting his weight from side to side. “The chooser of the stories? No! The storytellers choose the stories! Don’t you pay attention? I do not choose the stories!”
Zubalo ducked his head up and down, lower and lower each time. “What does it matter? You choose the storytellers, then! That is the same thing!”
“No,” Old Loyolo said. Now he stood completely still, his wings spread a little and his feathers turned a little so that they looked like a row of sharp knives. “I do not choose the storytellers. They choose themselves. What I do is to keep those who are not storytellers from telling things that are not stories!”
“Anyone who tells a story is a storyteller.” Zubalo’s crowing was thin and weedy, a call that barely carried throughout the girl’s tiny room.
“Then tell yours,” Old Loyolo said, with the voice of death. “And take the consequences, if you are wrong.”
“The consequences?”
But Loyolo only glared at him. And so Zubalo hopped over to the mirror and flapped awkwardly up to the perch. He struck the window and tumbled backward, only barely catching his claws on the perch. They screeched against the glass.
But then he caught his balance and hopped around to face his audience, his first full audience.
It reminded me of my first story. And so before I tell you Zubalo’s story, let me tell you this one…
4. Winter Fruit
Miklos had always wanted an old-fashioned Catholic funeral, with incense and a tomb, so he’d converted a few years ago, when the doctor started to warn him about his heart. He didn’t change his diet.
The tomb was cold, but not actually unpleasant.
I locked the door of the tomb behind him and placed the key on a black ribbon inside my dress, singing an old song under my breath. Outside the tomb, it was cold but sunny, and a light breeze played with the black silk scarf covering my hair.
I had to choke back an appalling giggle. Miklos would tell horrible jokes at funerals—the one about switching heads—the one about the man who wanted to be buried with his money, so his wife wrote him a check—
Andros stood next to me with his hand on my shoulder, squeezing hard. The family looked like dancers at a costume ball wearing masks of tragedy, which would soon be cast aside for the hideous grimaces of comedy at the dinner.
If only they had known how hungry I was.
—
The family stood near the man-made lake across the street and watched the wintry sun set behind the mountains. As soon as the arc of the sun left the sky, the aunts drew their scarves away from their faces and sang. It was not a Catholic song. It was not a Greek song. There were no words, no wailing, only harmonies.
Afterwards, we walked the half-mile to the restaurant. Andros had prepared the food himself: chewy, spicy kollyva, toasted paximadia, and piles of pomegranates, their crowns sacred to Miklos’s old religion and least worth an old-fashioned superstition from his new one.
And meat.
Andros had roasted an entire lamb in the parking lot behind the restaurant. He’d marinated it with yogurt and salt over three days while we prepared for the funeral. One of his cooks had stayed with the lamb during the last rites, basting it with garlic, lemon, oregano, and olive oil. Andros and I had viewed the lamb before the service had started.
He had left the head on, the spit driven grotesquely through the hole in the bottom of its jaw, making it seem as though the creature had suffered horribly, dying in the flames.
I swallowed back my desire to fling myself on the roast lamb. “Is it ready?” I asked Andros, casually.
Andros arched an eyebrow at me, making the hairs along my arms stand on end. “Certainly,” he said. “Hungry?”
I bit my lip. “I haven’t eaten since last night,” I said, lying.
Andros pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and cut off a thin sliver of charred meat. “For you, the first cut.”
I held it under my nose for a second and popped it into my mouth. It tasted of bitter ashes.
—
Miklos was a mad clench of muscle and gristle, not an inch taller than I. His hair was wiry and black; his jaw couldn’t stay clean for over an hour. He was made like stone, so incredibly dense that on our honeymoon, he stood on the ocean floor near Naxos while fish and tiny octopi darted through his fingers as if he were a fallen statue. Perhaps he was.
—
The Harbor, white and Greek blue, shimmered in the twilight like a ghost. Miklos and Andros had claimed it was haunted by a third brother, a lost triplet who had died in the ocean of their mother’s womb. Andros opened the door. Inside, the tables had been heaped with the feast and the wine stood ready to pour. Although I had been the first to walk through the door, Andros seated the aunts first. But who could blame him? I was only a beautiful young widow. Hardly family.
As he held the chair for me, he whispered in my ear, “Be with me.”
I sat, and he pushed the chair to the table. His arms weren’t as strong as Miklos’s, but they were strong enough.
“What, lovers?” I whispered.
“I will satisfy you in ways Miklos could not.”
“Ah. Food.”
“You never gain an ounce.”
I pinched Andros in the waist, and he jumped. One of the aunts glared at us.
“You are the perfect woman to me.”
“Let me mourn in peace, Andros.”
“I know your secret.”
“Which secret?”
“You killed Miklos.”
I hissed through my teeth. “I did no such thing.”
“You were hungry, weren’t you?”
“Not that hungry.”
“You gave him the heart attack. You frightened him.”
“It was your over-rich food that killed him,” I snapped out loud. “Andros, respect the dead for at least one meal.”
And then I started to eat.
—
If Miklos was a statue, Andros was an avalanche. Andros would seduce women by changing their children’s diapers, then insist the brats be left to cry while they made love. He would sell lobster with sea-urchin sauce for less than the food cost, because his customers must taste it. His staff quit within weeks or lasted for years: students, sadists, perfectionists. He regularly took waitresses for lovers, then fired them when he tired of them. He never admitted to fathering a particular child—but never denied it, either.
Andros’s hair was a soft brown, falling in soft waves that he tied back when he was in the kitchen. His hands were softer than Miklos’s—but covered with scars. Miklos could stand still for hours on end. Andros was light on his feet; he loved to dance. Miklos could only manage a stately waltz.
—
The feast lasted well into the evening, and Andros was generous with the Amethystos. I ate heartily until I saw one of the aunts frowning at me; then I pushed my plate away and groaned at my fullness, tugging the waistband of my skirt.
Being so close to the mounds of food remaining on the table made me f
oul-tempered, so I stepped outside for air. Andros followed me. He put his arms around me, and I pushed him off.
“I want to make love to you,” he moaned.
I snorted. “Here?” The garbage was redolent.
“Here. Anywhere.”
“Go find one of the cousins. They won’t mind a little incest.”
“Please, Adrienne—” He ran a hand across my chest.
I slapped him. “Andros! Your brother is dead!”
“You killed him!” He reached for me again.
I tried to walk past him into the restaurant; he grabbed for me again. But I have known Andros for years, and I was ready. I rushed him against the trash bin with a loud, empty clang, slammed his head against the rim, and stormed off. Andros is persistent but easily shifted. And I am strong.
As I yanked open the door, the family doctor, Dr. Alex, stepped out. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I said. “I’d be more worried about Andros if I were you. He might not survive the night, if he doesn’t keep his hands off me.”
Dr. Alex put an eyebrow up at me. “Several drugs, when combined with alcohol, cause erectile dysfunction. Perhaps it’s time for a prescription.”
I laughed. My stomach growled.
Dr. Alex said, “You can’t possibly be—”
I shoved past him. “It’s just gas,” I said.
“Ah,” he said, looking at Andros.
—
I fumed and helped myself to some wine and a plate of cookies, regardless of the aunts and their observations. Dr. Alex glanced at me, a bland look on his face—he had the most remarkably bulging forehead—from across the room.
I hadn’t killed Miklos! Dr. Alex knew it for the truth, no matter what poison Andros whispered. Miklos was older than I, with a heart even older than the years on his birth certificate could show. I wanted to shout the truth into the room.
Instead I picked up a pomegranate and shredded the rind and pith with my fingers. I left the vermillion, jeweled pips piled on a plate. I promised myself I could leave as soon as I had finished them, eating the vermillion jewels one by one to pass the time. And then I would take my memories of Miklos and go home, away from his squabbling, glowering relatives.
I was just about to eat the first pip when Andros returned. He tried to steal a handful of pips from my plate, but I grabbed his hand by the wrist and forced it away, unceremoniously knocking the spectacles off a nearby cousin.
Before his blood-kin could protest, Andros shouted, “A toast!” He picked up his wine, but his glass was empty, so he picked up my glass instead. I stood up, taking my plate of pomegranate pips with me, so quickly I nearly knocked over my chair.
“A toast! To Adrienne!”
“Andros,” I hissed. “Shut up!”
“To Adrienne and her hunger!” he roared, his voice echoing through the room as all conversation stopped.
No one echoed his toast. He drank regardless.
“May it never fail,” he concluded.
I flung the pips at him—the plate fell and shattered—I refused to eat anything he’d touched—and left, weeping tears of outrage and humiliation. I swore to myself never to walk through the door of Andros’s restaurant again.
You may judge for yourself whether I succeeded.
—
Halfway home and almost blinded by the moon in my eyes, a hand gripped my arm, and I wrenched myself free, ready to launch myself down Andros’s throat.
“Adrienne—” I should have known it was Dr. Alex, following me again.
“Leave me alone!” I shouted.
“Let me examine you,” he said.
I laughed. “You told Andros, didn’t you? After all these years, he knows. You think I killed Miklos, don’t you?”
Dr. Alex shrugged, turning his enormous forehead into a beachside of creases.
“I didn’t kill him!”
“Don’t tell me you never thought about it. He was almost as bad as Andros. In his own way.”
I shook my head. “No. Never. I would never hurt either of them.”
“All right,” he said. “Now, will you come back to my office tonight?”
I sighed. “Go back to the restaurant, Dr. Alex. People will talk. I can’t afford it.”
“Promise me.”
“All right. Monday.”
“We open at eight.”
“All right! Now, go!”
He smiled, the moonlight turning him into a ghost even before his scent left my nostrils. Then my stomach growled, and I turned and ran all the way home.
Oh God, what am I going to do? I thought. Miklos, Miklos, why did you leave me?
The phone was ringing off the hook, but nobody had left any messages on the answering machine—Andros. I locked, bolted, and chained the doors, put a pile of sliced, roasted lamb from the refrigerator on a platter, and went downstairs, eating as I went. The smell from the basement raised the hairs inside my nose, as always—disinfectant, bleach, and rancid fat.
Miklos had left me with six clients; our assistant Yuri had taken care of all but the two who needed more than rouge. I flipped on the lights.
The two clients were alone, sadly, their families leaving them to my care rather than spending the night. I would guard their bodies from the spirits, I promised them.
The dead are always heavier than they look. To move one part of the body is to try to move an entire life, they are so heavy.
I pulled open the gentleman’s drawer and pulled his gurney out, then wheeled it under my lights. The man had died young and handsome—until the automobile accident that had put him through the windshield and onto the asphalt. Yuri had done his best. He’d cleaned the face down to the pores, rebuilt the jawline and teeth, and attached the skin as securely as possible without damaging it further. Luckily, the eyelids were undamaged.
I scrubbed and dressed and left the empty platter in the sink. I’d already set up the man’s photograph at my table, along with a molded latex cheek I’d cast from the other side of the man’s face. I never try to make the dead look like the living, no matter how much the clients’ families beg me; it’s never a mercy.
A couple of hours later, I was still fussing with the way the bones of the jaw molded the cheek to match the photograph (they didn’t) and decided to take a break. Despite the ache in my back, I felt at peace, my stomach finally settled. I stripped off my gloves, washed up, and went upstairs.
The light on the answering machine was blinking. No messages from Andros, thank God. One from Dr. Alex reminding me of my appointment tomorrow morning. One from Yuri, begging me to unchain the door, because he couldn’t get in and finish with the female client before morning.
“Oh, hell,” I said, just as someone pounded on the back door. I unchained the door and flung it open before Yuri could leave. “I’m sorry—”
Andros shoved his way through. “You should be.”
I slammed the door, but it was too late. “Get out! I won’t sleep with you, no matter what lies you yell from the top of the mountain, you bastard!”
Andros walked into the kitchen and flung open the refrigerator. “Where is it?”
“Where is what, you fool?”
“Don’t play with me. It’s downstairs, isn’t it?” His voice crackled, as if he’d screamed himself hoarse, which would have taken some work, for him. Andros ran out of the kitchen, leaving the refrigerator door open.
My peace of mind had melted like grease in a frying pan, spitting and hissing in the heat. My stomach growled again. I slammed the refrigerator door and stalked after Andros.
Andros was looking inside the refrigerators downstairs, looking inside the other client’s bag.
“Get out of there!” I shouted.
“Where is it?” he gasped, trying to shout but unable to raise his voice above an ugly whisper.
“What? What? What is so important that you violate the peace of the dead?”
“Miklos’s heart!”
I was too confused to sh
out. “Why would his heart be here? We just buried him.”
Andros’s eyes seemed to turn to lightning, and he rushed me, both hands out to shove me or strangle me or both. I hit my head against the concrete wall. For some reason, my nose hurt like all the rages of hell for a moment before I passed out.
—
When I awoke, I was locked in the refrigerator downstairs. I knew this because the air was cold and humid (to keep skin from cracking in the dry air), I was surrounded by the smell of old blood and metal, and the door at my feet was locked. I kicked, saddened by the dents I must be leaving in the refrigerator door but unable to keep myself from lashing out.
After a few dozen kicks, I twisted myself around (I am just small enough; Miklos could never have done it), and fumbled around in the dark until I found the catch. I forced it with my fingers, pinching the rollers until the spring forced back, and pushed the door.
It opened only a fraction of an inch. The room outside the refrigerator was hardly warmer than the inside. But I could tell, from the padlock rattling as I beat the door, I was well and truly locked inside my drawer.
I howled. “Andros!” My voice echoed back to me.
I could have begged Andros for my freedom, but he would have heard the threat in my voice regardless. I meant to kill him, as I had never meant to kill Miklos. One way or another, the body would never be found. I howled again, and my stomach howled with me.
But Andros didn’t answer me; no one did. Eventually I fell asleep.
—
I awoke to the smell of heaven, of succulent meat. Pork, burnt and smothered in a piquant sauce. Lamb from the ceremonial feast. Sautéed mushrooms, onions. The deep-earth smell of pickled cabbage with wine and garlic. Olives, bitter oranges, oregano. I could list the scents for you, one by one, until you covered your ears and laughed at me to stop, mocked me for my over-delicate nose. Cumin, turmeric, coconut. Mussels. Fresh cream. Cheese so passionate about its own molds it stung the nose to be within a dozen feet of it. Coffee, as fresh as a new-killed rabbit.
A Murder of Crows: Seventeen Tales of Monsters and the Macabre Page 5