Tender : Stories

by Sofia Samatar

  Well, I laughed at that. He covered his face. He cannot bear my laughter: Olimpia never laughs. “Come, show some spirit,” I said, prodding him with my foot. He began to strike his head against the wall, and when he seized the poker, determined to do himself a mischief, I decided to leave the room.

  Outside, the streets were lightly dusted with snow. Winter is coming early to the dream city, just as it is coming here. Walking beside the dream canal, I hummed a snatch of tune which, now that I come to think of it, might become an aria for Olimpia’s Ghost. I think I should call it “The Hidden Life of Dolls.” It will be sung by the Ghost herself, of course. The tune is similar to “Ach, du lieber Augustin.” I am only really happy with two lines:

  See! the midnight clock is shining brightly.

  It is the dolls’ moon.

  Is it not rather fine? Perhaps it is not exactly poetry; but you will take care of that. I remember a golden day, so long it seemed nearly endless, and the strawberries in the meadow, and you told us a fortune-teller had predicted you would become a cabinet minister. Emil said it was possible; he might become one too, why not; you might both have distinguished careers, for being Jewish was hardly a handicap nowadays. You stared at him in amazement. “A cabinet minister! Is that what you envision for me? Boiled beef at dinner, and speech-writing afterward? Thank you very much!”

  I understood you perfectly. I said: “Sigmund will be a poet.”

  You looked at me, grateful and sunburned, your shirt open at the neck. “There!” you said, triumphant. “Gisela knows me best, after all.” And we both laughed at Emil, you and I together.

  Then, of course, he blushed, and claimed he was only joking, and that he would be a painter. But he will do no such thing. He will inherit the dye-works.

  What of you, dear Master?

  This morning my eyes were crusted shut, as if I had slept for many days. The Sandman has been here!

  G.

  My Dear Master,

  Last night I pursued him into a church. I wore a barometer at my waist like a reticule. Clumps of candles shone here and there in the huge dark sanctuary, tiny and far apart, like autumn crocuses in a plain of mud.

  These lines, I notice, make me sound rather restless and unhappy. Be sure that I am nothing of the sort. My health is splendid: Mother has had to let out all of my dresses, and my hair has grown so thick I can scarcely grasp it in both hands. It is true that I go up and down the stairs more frequently than ever, but only because it is too wet to go out. I must tire myself somehow, and nobody likes my moving about so much, either in the house or in the dye-shop. And so: to the stairs. The old carpeting is almost all worn away, and the polished wood underneath gleams beautifully, rich as fat. I hurry down, for I get the most relief from climbing up again, toward the little hall window that frames a patch of sky.

  I begin to be frightened for him. When I entered the church his shock and horror were so great that he collapsed in the aisle, foaming at the lips. The priest and the other good people there took him away to a back room, where I hovered anxiously until he regained consciousness. He looked very thin, very frail, like a glass angel. I slipped away before he noticed me. I could hear him weeping as I went out of the church. What if he should die? I am haunted by the awful conclusion to Hoffmann’s tale.

  Dear Master! I write because you said “tell me everything.”

  G.

  And two years ago, the last time you came, you rushed past the house just as you were, all grimy from the journey, and you ran off into the meadow, and I ran after you, like a lunatic Mother said later, and we kicked through the grass, releasing a green, bruised odor, and you threw yourself into the arms of the cypress tree, the most somber tree in the meadow, certainly more funereal than the ones in Italian pictures, and perhaps there is something about our northern clime that makes them grow that way, almost black, absorbing all the light, not reflecting it at all, or perhaps it is only the paler light here, the paler sky against which they stand like sentries, and you seized a branch in your teeth and chewed it savagely, and I too pressed my face to the needles and bit, and you muttered Freiberg Freiberg, and I imagined that you were repeating my name.

  My Dear Sigmund,

  So, you persist in your silence. This is no more than I expected. Emil assures me that you will certainly not come now. Your zoology examination, it appears, is set for the end of the month. Well! I wish you success; though it is clear you need no encouragement from me.

  You are resolved, he says, to become a man of science.

  Perhaps you are thinking of my Nathanael, and wondering if he lives? Please do not distress yourself. Nathanael is quite well. Only last week I observed him consuming cakes on a balcony with his Olimpia. She, of course, ate nothing. It seems she is conscious of her figure. I peered at them from under my parasol, and walked on. I try not to let Nathanael see me these days. I imagine he and his darling will marry, and produce a line of human children with wooden hearts.

  Sigmund, I know the secret.

  Emil took me out this morning, at Mother’s urging. The air was raw, the streets a rough mixture of frost and mud. To my amazement, the marionettes were again dancing in the square, before a paltry audience of mostly poor children. Pierrot’s little face was so hard and sad, it brought the tears to my eyes. Columbine’s hand mirror, I realized, is a lorgnette. She peered at me with an eye as gray as a clam. Her gaze quite went through me; but the magnification also revealed a great crack in her plaster forehead.

  Thanks to the improved health I have enjoyed recently, I am very nimble and strong. I tore away from Emil and dashed behind the theater. The dirty little boy was sitting there, quite comfortable on an overturned pail, blowing vigorously on his gloveless hands. I could only see his father, the puppet-master, from the waist down: a pair of baggy trousers tucked into hobnailed boots. The boy stood, but I pushed past him and tugged the puppet-master’s shirt. He lifted the spangled curtain and glared at me.

  “What is it, miss?”

  On the other side of the theater, the children had begun to roar their disapproval at the sudden collapse of the show. Emil rushed up behind me. The puppet-master, breathing white fog from his black beard, told us to be off, using a vulgar expression. “I know the secret,” I told him. Emil had seized me now, and was pulling me away. He gave me a terrible lecture all the way home. I did not mind. Every time I raised my hand, as if sprinkling sugar, a host of swallows rose into the sky.

  To climb. To climb.

  This morning my eyes were crusted shut again. When I rubbed them, my fingers came away covered with brown flakes. Has the cold weather caused it somehow, or is it blood?

  Now that I am avoiding Nathanael, I have had the chance to explore more of the dream city. I often find myself in black, narrow, odorous, humid streets: the streets where I used to chase him in merrier days. There is a certain alley that reminds me of the one behind the smithy in Freiberg, the one with a plaque commemorating the burning of witches. I always feel nervous in that dark dream street—yet at the same time I am drawn to the place. Last night, as I wandered there, a curious scraping echoed from the walls. A slow, uneven, tortured sound, the groan of an object moving with great difficulty over the slimy stones.

  I paused. There was very little light—the buildings on either side shut out the moon—but the stones of the alley themselves possess a strange, greenish radiance. In that eldritch light, a figure came toward me, dragging itself painfully, a towering thing with an outline like a crag.

  Closer, closer! I watched, frozen to the spot. For the first time in that place, I was terrified. The creature lurched toward me on heavy, jointless legs. I saw it was made of wood. And not just wood, but a wild patchwork of wood, painted pieces fixed haphazardly together. It was as if a crazed puppeteer had taken all the pieces left over from building his marionettes, and constructed one fabulous, horrible puppet, a creature taller than a man, its shoulders built up like buttresses, its sad face hanging down upon its chest. For i
t had a sad face, Sigmund, such a sad face! A face of flesh, very pale, the face of an invalid. Bloody tear-tracks descended from its eyes. I knew at once that it was the Sandman. It raised a clumsy arm and pointed toward the sky.

  To climb. To climb.

  The last time I saw you: Vienna, New Year’s Eve. Your mother was distressed, as your father had not yet arrived. She kept running out to the landing to see if he had come. The parlor was hot from our dancing. I wore a white holiday dress and a black velvet ribbon. I had decided that there would be no more shyness on my part, no pretense. The flavor of bitter cypress was in my mouth. I had tucked a sprig of it inside the bosom of my dress, to bring you, there in the city, the delirious freshness of Freiberg. When we danced, I pressed close to you so that you would smell it. You pushed me back with a cold look. Later that night I heard you talking in the kitchen. “As for Gisela Fluss,” you said, “once she was a decorous doll, and now she has become an indecorous flirt.”

  A doll, a flirt. But I shall become an artist. And you: you will be a man of science.

  The Sandman jerked his arm, signaling to me. I realized that he was pointing to the single lighted window in the dismal tenement above the street. There, at a table, a man sat writing. His brown hair was tied in a pigtail. His coat was not clean. I thought, astonished, that this must be my Nathanael. Then he raised his head and looked out the window, eyes narrowed, pencil against his teeth, and I saw that he was an entirely different person. With his mobile face and pensive, furrowed brow, he looked more like the Sandman than Nathanael. He was, of course, the double of them both. Father, devil, puppeteer: he was Hoffmann. I glanced at the Sandman, who gestured eagerly at the drainpipe on the wall.

  I am no fortune-teller, Sigmund. But I will make you a prediction. I predict that one day you will regret your choice. I predict that you will try to go back, to find your way to the dream city and the winding streets that might have made you a poet. You will search for Hoffmann, and you will not find him. It will not be your destiny to embrace him and kiss him on the mouth. Nor will it be your destiny to wind your apron string about his neck, and set free his collection of wooden birds.

  The Sandman gestured to me, weeping blood.

  I went to the wall and examined the drainpipe. Now I could no longer see Hoffmann in his room. The edge of the lighted window shone like frost.

  I handed the Sandman my wig, grasped the pipe in both hands, and began to climb.

  The Tale of Mahliya and Mauhub and the White-Footed Gazelle

  This story is at least a thousand years old. Its complete title is “The Tale of Mahliya and Mauhub and the White-Footed Gazelle: It Contains Strange and Marvelous Things.” A single copy, probably produced in Egypt or Syria, survives in Istanbul; the first English translation appeared in 2015. This is not the right way to start a fairy tale, but it’s better than sitting here in silence waiting for Mahliya, who takes forever to get ready. She’s upstairs staining her cheeks with antimony, her lips with a lipstick called Black Sauce. Vainest crone in Cairo.

  She leaves her window open for the birds to fly in and out. If you listen closely, you’ll hear the bigger ones thump their wings against the sash. The most famous, of course, is the flying featherless ostrich. A monstrous creature, like something boiled. Mahliya adores it. She lets it eat out of her mouth.

  While we’re waiting, why don’t I tell you the Tale of the White-Footed Gazelle? I’m only a retainer, but I do know all the stories, for that’s the definition of a servant, especially one in my position, the head servant, and indeed, in these lean times, the only one. Once I presided over a staff of hundreds; now instead of directing many people, I direct many things: I purchase shoes and bedding, I keep up with all the fashions, with advances in medicine, tax laws, satellite TV. If your purpose, as you say, is to produce a monograph on the newly translated Tales of the Marvelous and News of the Strange, including versions of the stories as told by people who experienced them, why not begin with me? I am perfectly familiar with the Tale of the White-Footed Gazelle, which lies enclosed in the Tale of Mahliya and Mauhub. You will be familiar with this narrative structure from A Thousand and One Nights, a collection of tales whose fate has been very different from that of Mahliya’s story. One might ask: Why? Why should A Thousand and One Nights rise to such prominence, performed on stages in Japan and animated by Disney, while the very similar collection containing the Tale of Mahliya and Mauhub has moldered in a library for centuries? Well! No doubt all that is about to change. Just close the window for me, if you would; my bald head feels every draft. When I was a younger man—but that’s not the story you came to hear! Listen, then, and I shall spin you a marvelous tale.

  THE TALE OF THE WHITE-FOOTED GAZELLE

  I have condensed it for you because you are a researcher. In this story you will find:

  1. Haifa’, daughter of a Persian king, also a gazelle

  2. The White-Footed Gazelle, also a prince of the jinn

  3. Ostrich King

  4. Snake King

  5. Crow Queen

  6. Lion

  A love story. Haifa’ and the White-Footed Gazelle fall in love, then separate, then move toward each other again, then apart, as if in a cosmic dance. We learn that the Ostrich King unites hearts while the Crow Queen divides lovers. These movements of attraction and repulsion also characterize the Tale of Mahliya and Mauhub.

  An animal story. A prince of the jinn takes the form of a white-footed gazelle to follow Haifa’ into her secluded garden. When he abandons her due to a misunderstanding (he thinks she’s divulged his true nature), she tracks him through a country of marvelous beasts. In a wild green valley, ostriches graze in the shadow of the Obsidian Mountain that marks the border of the land of the jinn. The Ostrich King herds his flock with a palm branch, flicking their tails with the spikes. That night, as Haifa’ takes shelter with him, the Snake King passes with his retinue. A noisy party, jostling and laughing, quaffing great goblets of smoke. They ride upon snakes and wear snakes coiled round their heads like turbans. “Have you seen the White-Footed Gazelle?” Haifa’ asks. “No,” says the Snake King, flames flashing up in his mouth. “Ask the Queen of the Crows.”

  To reach the Crow Queen, Haifa’ flies on a smooth-skinned, featherless ostrich, which covers a two-year journey in a single night. The Crow Queen is a scowling old woman with ten jeweled bracelets on each arm, ten anklets on each leg, and ten rings on each finger. She wears a golden crown studded with gems, carries an emerald scepter, spits on the floor, and has never shown pity to anyone. Fortunately, Haifa’ bears a letter from the Ostrich King, and the Crow Queen owes him a debt. She reunites Haifa’ with her beloved.

  The story doesn’t end there. Haifa’ pines for her own country, and her new husband agrees to a visit as long as they both go as gazelles. Unfortunately, they are captured: Haifa’ the Gazelle by Mauhub, and the White-Footed Gazelle by Mahliya. When we meet Haifa’, she’s just been turned back into a woman by a priest of Baal. Weeping, she tells Mauhub her story. Mauhub is astounded, but not as much as you might think. He’s an animal intimate himself: as a child, he was suckled by a lion.

  A few more interesting points about this story:

  1. Feet

  The White-Footed Gazelle is named for his feet and also seems to have a foot fetish. When he first transforms himself into a man in front of Haifa’, he declares his love and immediately kisses her feet. In between kisses he speaks to her in a pure and elegant language, more delicious than honey and softer than clarified butter. “He said I was like a shoot of sweet basil. He kissed my feet and sucked them and by God I felt my heart fly into my throat.”

  2. Shivering

  The gazelle shivers and turns into a woman. She tells the story of the White-Footed Gazelle, which shivered and turned into a man. A weird sort of shudder seems to precede transformation. The strangest thing, though, is the seizure suffered by our heroine’s father. This happens early in the story, when Haifa’ is living with her lover in an
exquisite idyll: he’s her pet gazelle by day, her lover in a locked room at night. Then one night Haifa’ wakes to a cry of alarm: “The king! The king!” Terrified for her father, she rushes out half-dressed, leaving the door open. The White-Footed Gazelle doesn’t wake up—perhaps he’s a heavy sleeper, or perhaps, being a jinni, he’s deaf to human sorrow. Whatever the reason, he only wakes at dawn. Finding himself alone, the door open, he thinks Haifa’ has betrayed him and exposed their secret.

  Out the window he goes on mist-white feet. Haifa’ will come back soon, having left her father sleeping peacefully. She’ll cry out over the empty bed. She’ll dash out into the garden, slapping her face in her grief. She will begin her quest.

  How strange that the source of the error that parts these lovers should be a seizure. An excess of trembling.

  To shiver is to move rapidly from one place to another and back. From prince of the jinn to white-footed gazelle, from beloved to enemy. I think of this whole story as a long shudder.

  3. Lion

  I did say there was a lion, didn’t I! Haifa’ the Gazelle meets him shortly before she’s captured by Mauhub. The lion has scraped out a hole in the ground and he’s squatting in it and crying. “Dark-eyed gazelle, fair as the moon, I, the red lion, have suffered a great sorrow . . .” The story sort of drops him there. Later, of course, he’ll turn out to be the long-lost mate of the lioness who suckled Mauhub. This fact won’t redeem the lion, who remains throughout the story the same dirty, sniveling creature we meet in this scene. Forget about him. He’s an asshole.