Waking the Moon

by Elizabeth Hand

  But now it was all to start anew. Finnegan begin again…

  It was early morning of the first of May, a clear unseasonably cool morning for the city. I was hurrying from a cab to the sliding glass doors of the Emergency Room of Providence Hospital. A friend had gone into acute pulmonary distress, the last time it was to happen but I did not know that yet. I had not forgotten Oliver’s suicide, of course, but this hospital had long since become the scene of other dramas for me. I walked quickly to the ER doors with my head down, staring at the cracked concrete, the carnival detritus of shivered glass and metal. An ambulance was backing up from the doorway. Just outside the entrance a heavyset raw-faced woman was standing numbly, tears streaming down her cheeks. I did not want to look at her. So I looked down, tightening my grip on my briefcase. On the pavement were shattered crack vials and flattened cans, the ruby lens of a smashed headlight. You might have been able to trace the history of all the unfortunates inside of Providence, if you only knew where to look.

  Then something else caught my eye. I hesitated, stopped, and bent to look more closely.

  Overhead a metal awning thrust above the entrance to the Emergency Room, so that the rectangle of broken tarmac beneath stood in perpetual shade. There were small filthy pools of scummy water that never dried, and large black beetles with knobbed antennae that crawled across a liquefying red-and-white box from Popeye’s.

  And there was something else as well: pushing up through a crack in the concrete, not frail or etiolated as one might have expected but strong, its stem thick around as my forefinger, its curved leaves the deep nitrogen-rich green of leaves that bask in the sun all day.

  A flower. A hyacinth.

  Not the bulbous heavy-scented bloom known as a hyacinth in this country, but Scilla non-scripta, the wood hyacindi, Homer’s huakinthos. Its blossoms so rich a violet-blue they seemed to have been cut and folded from velvet, their yellow stamens as vivid and startling as eyes glimpsed from between the lappets of a heavy cloak. An amazing thing! I knew they did not grow anywhere outside of the Mediterranean, and even there only in wild lonely places, crags and mountainsides sacred to Artemis and her twin Apollo, and to the memory of the slain lover who gave his name to the flower.

  Impossible; but there it was. As I brought my face closer I could just barely discern beneath the scents of car fumes and creosote its fragrance: sweet but very very faint, as though borne to me across mountains and rivers and stony plains, across an entire ocean, across a night country whose steppes I had seen only once but never forgotten. As from a past that was not my own but was somehow laying claim to me from an unthinkable, almost unbearable, distance.

  PART THREE

  Return

  CHAPTER 10

  Ignoreland

  I DIDN’T REALLY CHANGE all that much. I didn’t turn grey. I didn’t get fat, I didn’t get married, I didn’t have children, I didn’t die. When I wasn’t at work I wore the same T-shirts and jeans and battered cowboy boots, although I drew the line at buying a black leather jacket at thirty-seven and pretending I was still twenty-two. I listened to the same music I always had, although Baby Joe did his best to educate me beyond the tastes I’d formed when I was still in college. It wasn’t exactly like I’d sold out on my life and dreams and all that other bullshit, because the truth was I’d never actually had anything to sell. It was more like I slowly froze in place, inside my little office at the museum; more like some part of me just fell asleep one day and never woke up. Everything that had happened to me all those years before gradually disintegrated into a kind of dream.

  There was nothing to tether me to my memories of the Divine. Oliver was dead, Angelica might as well be. I had invested everything in two stocks that failed. Baby Joe remained my only real contact from that single semester. He had graduated summa cum laude, with a degree in English, and was now the beleagured Alternative Arts & Music critic for the beleagured New York Beacon, from whence he waged an ongoing war against his rivals and detractors in the Manhattan print media. Every few months he’d send me a compilation tape of music he thought I should be listening to. Baby Joe’s idea of must-hear stuff included the Ramayana Monkey Chant as well as the entire and surprisingly extensive catalog of a dreadful band called Boink. His scant free time he devoted to writing a novel, but he did a good job of keeping in touch. He called me every couple of months, telling me about people from the Divine I’d never had the chance to know—famous people, a lot of them, anthropologists and theologians and actresses and fledgling politicians—as well as Hasel Bright and Annie Harmon.

  I thought of Annie often. Baby Joe gave me her number, but I never called. What do you say after nearly twenty years? But I was also embarrassed: like Baby Joe, Annie Harmon had gone out there and done something. Annie had become a cult figure.

  She’d come out of the closet shortly after I left the Divine, spent a bunch of years knocking around the whole coffeehouse/nouveau folkie scene, and then, mirabilis! she’d become a star.

  “‘Silver-tongued dyke with a gold-plated mike,’” said Baby Joe dryly, reading to me over the phone from an article in On Our Backs! “Huh. But she’s great, you should hear her.”

  That spring it was impossible not to hear her. The video of her version of “She Is Still a Mystery,” with its Georgia O’Keeffe backgrounds and the waltzing figure of Annie herself in full George Sand drag, had been getting heavy rotation on MTV. Then there was the notorious cover for Our Magazine, Annie dressed as Nijinsky in “L’Après-midi d’un Faun,” simulating orgasm with an Hermes scarf before an audience of captivated bluestockings. I couldn’t walk into a club or Galleria without Annie’s husky contralto seeping into my thoughts like fragrant oil. Baby Joe said she lived somewhere in the Berkshires with her lover, and although she had changed her name to Annie Harmony, that was the only cute thing about her.

  “She looks dangerous, man. Shaved head and all these piercings. I hear she has a gold ring through her clit. I know she has one in her nipple.” He laughed. “Maybe you should try it, hija. Get you out on a date with something besides a lawyer.”

  Baby Joe regarded my social life (or lack of it) with even more horror than my musical taste. About once a year he’d come to D.C. to visit old friends from the Divine and to see me. We’d go to small, pleasingly gritty clubs to hear bands with monosyllabic names that were easy to remember, though their music was hard to dance to.

  Anyway, by then I wasn’t dancing much anymore. I’d kept up with the times: turning off, drying up, straightening out. I worked out three days at week. I lived in a rented carriage house on Capitol Hill and walked to work. I had a VCR, PC, and an aging VW Rabbit, though I resisted getting a CD player. It seemed an unnecessary expense, since I wasn’t buying much new music. And I didn’t care for CDs—they looked too much like the videodiscs I’d given my life to, they looked too much like what had happened to everything around me, people and things all getting sleeker, shinier, harder, bright reflective surfaces that put a spectral gloss on the world, but it was no longer the world I wanted to see.

  That spring I learned that Hasel Bright had died.

  “Bad juju, hija. I mean, real bad shit.”

  Baby Joe called me at home one evening, his voice slurred. In the background I could hear distorted music and laughter, someone yelling for a Kamakazi shooter.

  “You at Frankie’s?” That was the local dive where Baby Joe spent his few nights off.

  “Yeah. Uh, Sweeney—something bad happened.”

  I sucked my breath in. “You okay? What—”

  “Not me, hija. Hasel. Very bad.” A pause. I heard ice clattering in a glass. “Shit. Listen, Sweeney—I gotta go. It’s bad. But tomorrow—”

  “For god’s sake, what happened?”

  Another pause. Finally, “I can’t now. I got a flight out of LaGuardia, I’m going to Charlottesville for the funeral. His wife called me. But I got a letter for you from him—”

  “From Hasel? To me?”

  “N
o. I mean, he wrote it to me, but I’m sending it to you. A copy. I have to go. I’ll call you when I get back. Be careful, okay, hija?”

  The line went dead.

  “Shit,” I said. I paced into the kitchen and pulled out the bottle of Jack Daniels. I did a shot for myself, and another one for Hasel.

  Two days later I got the letter, a bulky envelope so swathed in packing tape I had to open it with a steak knife. When I turned it upside down, out slid a wad of paper, along with a note scrawled on a Frankie’s cocktail napkin.

  Sweeney—

  don’t tell anyone.

  Joe

  The Xeroxed pages that followed were on letterhead from Hasel’s law firm, neatly laser-printed and justified left and right, amended here and there with Hasel’s precise tiny printing.

  June 25

  Dear Joe,

  Thanx for the Gibby Hayes interview, pretty funny. Sorry I couldn’t get into this on the phone the other night but I felt so weird talking about it I figured I’d be better off writing. Only chance I get to write these days anyway other than briefs and memos to Ron Scala. Forgive the typos and stuff, obviously I can’t have the paralegals do this for me.

  Ok, so this is weird, but I think for obvious reasons you might make sense of it after you finish reading this. I didn’t tell Laurie, because she’s heard me talk about Angie and might take it the wrong way, so don’t mention it to her on the phone or something, ok?

  Remember that place we went a few years? Out in the country, a few guys from UVA went with us and we went fishing? I go fishing there a lot, usually later in the season. This year I haven’t even got my license yet but I went out anyway. I never catch much though one of the partners here says there’s some good-sized bass, the stream gets all clogged up in the winter with brush and stuff and makes a little pond. Anyway I usually leave my house about three a.m., it takes about forty-five minutes to get there and slog through the woods and all that, so it’s just about dawn when I finally reach the stream.

  I went there last Saturday. Laurie pulled a double shift otherwise she would have come and the girls have dance class Saturday morning, so I went alone. It was a very clear night and there were a lot of stars out. I got off a little late so it was closer to dawn than I would have liked but anyway I got there. Afterwards Laurie reminded me that it was the summer solstice. That kind of made my hair stand on end. (I told you this was weird.)

  But I didn’t know that then. It was a real pretty early morning or late night, however you want it. Listened to that bluegrass station out of Warrenton til the signal faded past Crozet, pulled the van over and got my stuff and walked in.

  There were a few mayflies left and the fish were definitely biting. I don’t use flies so I went for a popper, didn’t get anything so I dug around and finally found a couple of worms. That’s illegal, to use live bait right now, but who’s going to check, right? Anyway it didn’t matter because I didn’t catch anything. I mean I didn’t catch any fish—it was still pretty dark and I snagged a bat, that happens sometimes cause they hear the line I guess and they go for the bait, they think it’s an insect. Usually happens to fly fishermen but this time it was me.

  Now, bats don’t bother me really but you don’t necessarily want to be there in the dark with a bat flopping around on your line. I couldn’t tell if I snagged its wing or what, but I don’t think the hook was in its mouth. It fell in the water a few feet in front of me, pretty shallow mucky water and thrashed around. Weirdest thing was how you’re not supposed to be able to hear bats, but honest to god I could hear this one—a very strange high-pitched crying sound. Like wires or something, you know when you pluck a wire? And then I could start to hear other bats, Joe, it was creepy as hell. They were looking for it I guess and calling out and it was answering them. The poor little bat’s just struggling in the water, I guess I could’ve found the hook but I was afraid it would bite me. Plus, it’s a goddamn bat.

  So I got my penknife and cut the line. I needed some more coffee, I could feel it was going to be hot and the bugs started coming out and it was definitely time to go. That poor little bat’s still flopping around in the water, so before I left I got my rod and leaned over and pitched it onto the shore. I didn’t want it to drown. Lot of trouble for a stupid bat, right? But I think it was just a baby, it was so tiny, not even big as a mouse. It stopped struggling but I could still hear it crying and no kidding, it was like fingernails on a blackboard, gave me the chills.

  So I turned around and got my stuff, started to head back out of the woods when behind me I heard a noise. Not the bat but something splashing in the water. Otter I thought first but it sounded pretty big and I stiffened because you know there’s a lot of bear down here, see them up on Skyline Drive all the time. Just little black bears but my daddy didn’t raise no damn fool, you don’t turn your back on a bear! Wished I had my camera, but I didn’t. It was still splashing around back there, didn’t see me or didn’t care. So I turn around very slowly and damn straight, Joe, I wish I brought my camera!

  It was Angie. No damn bear and I know you’ll think I’m nuts, but it was her. I know you remember the same things I do, so I don’t have to tell you: I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t stoned. It was her.

  She was in the stream—the pool, actually, the open space where the stream had swelled after the rain and snowmelt. I didn’t think it could be deep enough in there to swim but that’s what she was doing, stroking through the water and her hair floating all behind her.

  I just about had a heart attack. She was naked and I swear to god she didn’t look any different than she did that other time, remember that weekend in W. Va? This was like that, she was swimming and she’d stand and the water would just slide off her and still she didn’t see me. I just stood and stared, I mean what would you do? Wanted to say something but I was so shocked I couldn’t. Couldn’t even move.

  Then she turned around. Sort of holding her wet hair up off her neck and her eyes closed and then I really did think I was going to have a heart attack. Because her eyes popped open and she was staring right at me. Those amazing eyes and her face just like it always was, not any older at all, and you know I might have been hallucinating except I knew I wasn’t. She stared right at me and I wanted to say something but she wasn’t smiling. Looked right at me and I could tell she recognized me, I almost thought she was going to say my name but she didn’t. She had a funny look on her face, not a very nice look to tell you the truth, and I thought maybe she was pissed I was there watching her without her clothes on but hell, this was Angie—I mean, when did she care about that?

  You tell me, Joe. Next thing I know my rod fell on my foot and when I grabbed it and looked up again she was gone. She was gone and that little bat was, too. I looked for it, swept the tip of my rod through the muck and waded out a little but I couldn’t find it. Guess it rolled back into the water and drowned after all.

  So there it is. A weird story, and I don’t know who else I could tell it to. “A Current Affair” maybe, huh? Jesus. Let me know what you think.

  And let me know when you’re heading down this way—we’ll go fishing.

  Hasel

  I put the last page of Hasel’s letter on the side table. There was one more page: a Xerox of two newspaper items, with arrows scrawled by Baby Joe. I didn’t want to read but of course I did. What would you do, Joe?

  It was a short article from the Charlottesville paper, about the death by drowning of a local attorney. The date was June 27.

  “Tragic and almost inexplicable,” the paper said; he had been fishing in the Branch Creek near Crozet, and somehow had fallen into the stream and drowned in a few inches of muddy water. There was no evidence of foul play.

  The other item was his obituary: Hasel Atkins Bright, attorney. Age 36, drowning accident; survived by his wife and two young daughters. In lieu of flowers, contributions could be made to a scholarship fund in Hasel’s name at the English Department of the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Div
ine.

  So.

  Hasel was dead, Oliver was dead. Baby Joe was drinking heavily but otherwise okay in New York. Annie was famous, and Angelica—unless one was to believe Hasel’s account of seeing her bathing in the Branch Creek near Crozet, Virginia—Angelica was still unaccounted for.

  And me? At 38, I was a GS-11 and holding, just barely holding on.

  Once, I’d dismissed Angelica’s account of the Benandanti as craziness. But during the years following my expulsion from the Divine, I often thought that she had been right. That whatever opportunity for change or expiation or revolution the dark goddess and Magda Kurtz and Angelica herself might have represented was now gone forever. The Benandanti had not relinquished their control over the world. They never would. If anything, their hold was stronger now than it ever had been. Fourteen years earlier, the day after the presidential inauguration, I stood at the entrance to the Dupont Circle Metro subway and watched as workmen hauled away the newspaper racks selling the Atlanta Constitution and Village Voice and Mother Jones, binding the flimsy metal-and-plastic machines in heavy link chains and dragging them down Pennsylvania Avenue to a waiting garbage truck. The next day, shiny new dispensers appeared, holding the LA, Times and Wall Street Journal. What Angelica had told me of the Benandanti made it all sound mystical and darkly glamorous, secret shamans ruling the world from behind a scrim of smoke and leaping flames.