Lament for the Afterlife

by Lisa L. Hannett

  “You’ve come to unburden yourself,” the girl says, the volume of her voice and the appearance of pointed slippers in his line of sight proof that she’s following. He blinks and blinks. “Come inside. Tell us your stories.”

  “Nonsense,” Peytr says, and darkness falls.

  Euri was telling them a fable about groundhogs. The bedroom was gloomy, only a single lantern between them and the window boarded up tight, and the groundhogs were making little Zaya cry. Tears plinked one by one from her lashes. Clustered like pearls in her blue gingham skirt. She wouldn’t say what was wrong, why they upset her, but Peytr thought he knew. It was the pickaxes they carried. The tiny headlamps. The way their whiskers quivered as they burrowed, tiny facial fingers groping for tremors or breezes, precursors of cave-ins. Their teensy, useless eyes. The sticks of dynamite they carried, stupid, unknowing, strapped in clumps on their backs. The hissing fuses.

  Peyt knew it was all supposed to mean something—fables always had morals—but Euri showed no sign of getting to the point. She talked and talked without making a sound. Her ’wind reflected the lamplight, glinting like a crown of stars. Beautiful and illegible. Peytr and Zaya sat cross-legged beside her, atop piles of blankets and mattresses and fur. They hunched instinctively, shying from the ceiling. Reaching over, Peyt patted the toddler’s inconsolable head. Straightened her bumblebee nightie so that it covered her knees. Euri made sure they were watching then stretched her arms out. It was this big.

  Legs stretched into the darkness, Daken lay sprawled on his back in boxers and undershirt. One muscular arm draped over his face, the other one bent, elbow propped on Peytr’s rucksack. Dake’s fingers snapped quickly, a racing heartbeat, but his whistle was off-tempo. Peyt edged closer to the other boy, leaned closer, tilted to hear better. Through the quilts something jabbed him in the hip. He wriggled around to dislodge it. Each fidget released puffs of dust, the linens heavy with mildew and the scent of old soap. He laid down and was jabbed in the arm. Shifting positions, he held Daken round the waist and rested his head on his stomach. He felt the thrum of Dake’s whistle, a long single note reverberating through his skull. Peytr nestled. Squeezed. Daken snorted, his ’wind feather-tickling Peyt’s brow. He smiled—until the jab moved up to his ribs. Sharper now, a painful, pointed digging. Scowling, he sat up while Euri mouthed empty words and the baby howled and Daken began to deflate, groundhogs pick-picking at them all through the blankets, the furs, the skins of their dead brothers.

  The whistle moaned, loud and low. Peytr placed his hand across Daken’s mouth. To stop the air escaping. To silence that mournful sound. And Dake grinned, lips parting, and licked Peytr’s palm.

  Peyt gasped and swallowed and swallowed.

  And wakes.

  He’s lying in a nest of oversized pillows at the far end of a long, narrow space. A light blanket strangles his waist as he shifts to lie on his back. Crates and cardboard boxes serve as a headboard; his legs extend under a sturdy pine table, feet jarring against the wall. High above him, half-length drapes cover a window as wide as the room. No boards cover the panes; the curtains’ purple hems are limned with a crimped line of warm daylight. Peyt rolls onto his side, turning his back to the vulnerable glass. He rolls, and is speared in the ribs. With a grunt he fumbles under the covers, hears a dull crack, and immediately feels wetness slick his undershirt. I’ve been stabbed, he thinks, pulling the dagger out of his side. Staring at it in confusion. The blood glistening on his hand is not red but black; it oozes from the broken haft in his grip. The clear plastic casing is crazed from being slept on. Its ballpoint tip bent at a wrong angle. Not a knife, he realises, dropping the pen. Spattering ink on the loose-leaf notes stacked next to his pillows. A snuffed lantern is nailed to the floor beside them, right at the edge of the dais supporting his crude bed. Even in the dim light, he can read handwriting on the papers. It is neat. Precise. Well-informed.

  Each page, each entry, is marked with coordinates. Longitude. Latitude. Some form of dating Peyt has never seen before. What does this mean? Where the storytellers lived? Can’t be, he thinks, reading the first one, which tells of an airship sailing through the stars just to leave a bootprint on the moon. Maybe it’s where their subject matter comes from? Peyt learned a bit about maps before—before. And he’s pretty sure this one, about parades and street parties and wild feathered costumes, has deadzone coordinates. Yeah, that fuckin’ place has been deadzoned for a hundred years… . So this one’s either really really old, or really really wrong. His stomach clenches then rumbles noisily, but Peyt is used to ignoring it. There are more important things than hunger. Like the Hid— catching his eye Hid— wrinkling a lined yellow paper Hid— poking a corner out of the stack Hid— adding a new clamp to his guts. Shivering, he teases it out from under the others. Inches closer to the edge of the dais and the muted light filtering toward it, down the room’s long aisle. Peyt swallows and swallows. Smudged with thumbprints, the scrap is torn in half but lists several coordinates under a single heading. Coordinates, he’s pretty sure, that include his city. His town. His suburb.

  Hidden ones.

  Peytr can’t breathe. He flips the sheet over, reads part of a line—“I sought them out, not the other way around,”—and wants to read more, but the page lilts to the carpet. His hands senseless. His arms shaking uncontrollably. He has to trap them under his torso, press his weight down, hard, harder, to protect himself from the greys.

  She knows where they are, he guesses, watching the woman—the girl?—come in from outside. The entryway is narrow with two skinny glass doors edged in iron, propped open to let in a stream of daylight. Inside, golden beams glint on tin and steel and wood veneer. None of the girl’s—the woman’s—furnishings match. The dints and scratches and browned, ingrained dust, show that none of these pieces is new. Everything is either nailed to the burnished metal walls, which rise to a curved ceiling, or fixed to the floor. Strong black bolts stick out like landmine triggers through gaps in multi-coloured carpets.

  Does she know?

  One step, two, and she’s climbed into the bus, carrying a small kettle, a thin line of steam still puffing from its short spout. Gaze turned inward, she seems to move out of habit. Wending around the driver’s seat, card catalogues, pigeonholes, cabinets with wide, thin drawers. Ducking under low-hanging shelves and overhead compartments. Sitting at a little wooden desk, wedged between two leather trunks halfway down the aisle. Singing under her breath as she fills a porcelain teacup to the brim.

  She must know, he thinks. This girl. This woman. This keeper of stories. This guardian of fantasies and truths. This Librarian.

  He teeters on the edge of the dais, crushing her smudged, precise notes. Listening to her song, Peyt fails to make sense of it. Breathy words keep time with her pen’s scratching, breathy wordwind captions what she writes as she sings. Dot 2. Recitative: ’Tis nobler far (Tenor, Bass)… . Dot 3. Aria: Pluck root and branch (Bass)… . The points dip and bob with her cadences, dervishes of sound and meaning that suit her somehow, that complement the turquoise skirt she’s wearing over loose beige pants, that skim her white tank top and accentuate her tattoos. Arabesques ink up and down her light brown arms, sleeves of language he can’t and won’t ever read.

  Nonsense, Peytr thinks. Nonsense.

  He knows he should talk now, let her know he’s awake, but he holds back. As she sings, his wordwind knits itself into a sheet. Sturdy, strong, clear thoughts settle on him like a mantle. Steady. Secure. He feels the sudden urge to curl up in this woman’s gibberish, her musical knowledge, and sleep and sleep and sleep. Enveloped. Comforted. Almost at peace. But his eyes refuse to close.

  Dot 4. Recitative: Our souls with ardour glow (Tenor)… .

  Panels of stained glass have been soldered over holes in the bus’s side windows. They sift the morning light into a confetti of colours, speckling the woman’s profile as she bends over her work. Her strong nose is softened by a smattering of crimson petals. Collarbone jewelled w
ith eight-pointed stars in indigo, emerald, amber. Jade serpents and trees shaped like teardrops, with curved rows of fish-scales instead of leaves, ripple across her breasts.

  He’s never seen anyone so relaxed while working. At the factory, Borys was always wrung. Snapping when Peyt got too close to the bender, snapping when he strayed too far. Old Jer was a lot more laid back, but even he’d knock Peyt’s ’wind off every now and again. Venting, he said. That’s what you’re here for, ain’t it boy? Jean brought in her fair share of coin, but didn’t exactly seem happy about it. Even though she stayed home most days and still got paid. And poor Mrs M—Ann—didn’t work at all. Can’t hack the stress, she told him once. Just can’t hack it. And Dake… . And the other grunts, well. Talk about fuckin’ stress. There was enough pressure in those boys to fill a bomb big enough to wreck half the country in one blow. But this girl. This woman sipped hot aniseed water and fuckin’ sang. Dot 5. Chorus: Shall we the God of Israel fear? (Persians)… . Dot 6. Recitative: Now persecution (Tenor)… . Her slippers kicked off under the desk. One bare foot tucked up under her, the other threading its toes through a shaggy maroon carpet. Absentmindedly braided, her black hair hangs over one shoulder. A long tangle that coils on her thigh. Even seated, Peyt realises, she’s tall. Solid, not fat. A stockman’s figure. A mule-driver’s muscles. Built for heavy burdens.

  Dot 7. Aria: Tune your harps (Tenor)… .

  Like knowing where the greys are, he thinks. And knowing where they aren’t.

  “Can you tell me?” he asks, not loud, but loud enough to make her jump. Her ’wind skitters out of sequence—Dot 21. Recitative: Who dares intrude (Tenor, Soprano)—but she quickly catches herself. Dot. 8. Chorus: Shall we of servitude complain? She flutters a hand over her heart, and laughs.

  “Never mind.” Peyt kicks at the blanket. Shivering, sweating, he shoves it into the shadows. Papers scatter off the platform as he clambers to his knees, ink stains scattershot across his ribcage. Chest heaving, he looks for his things. His boots are heels-out beneath a low stool, just out of reach, his rucks slumped nearby on the floor. Hood and jacket are folded neatly on the seat, a plate of flatbread and soft white cheese balanced on top of them. Peyt’s shoulders wilt. He wraps his arms around himself and squeezes. Mouth watering, he looks at the food. The girl. The food. The girl.

  He’s so hungry it hurts.

  She looks back at him. Actually looks. One of her ears has melted into her skull; the shell of it half-dribbles down her jaw. A gold paisley medallion dangles from the other lobe, attached to an oversized sieve of an ear. It’s pocked and perforated with holes; some small as his fingertip, others two knuckles wide. For a few seconds, he watches her honest words weave their odd song through the great holes in her ear. And he thinks it’s just that, her ear, it’s simply great, despite the ugliness, for letting the ’wind pass through unharmed. Her smile broadens as she reads his thoughts, and he feels the tension in his chest ease a bit. And he thinks, suddenly, he’s become one of the boys Ma used to laugh about. The stupid, romantic ones who believe a woman’s flaws make her more perfect.

  “I should go,” he says, barely audible.

  The girl takes a sip of her drink. Squints at Peyt over the cup’s rim. Watches him scramble out of her bed in his stained undershirt and pants three sizes too big. Reads all she needs to know about him in the blotches on his arms. The words caught in the scrag of his hair. The way he unlaces his boots, yanks their cracked tongues. The way he doesn’t put them on.

  “I’ll show you out,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “Whenever you wish.”

  “You don’t have to,” Peytr replies, boots swaying in his trembling hands.

  She smiles and says, “I know.”

  She doesn’t know her true name. When the Librarians found her, oh, twenty-five years ago, in the vast parking lot of an old concert hall, her parents had already gone. Dead or fled—or maybe swept by the greys. “Ironic, isn’t it? Surrounded by records, but none of my own,” she says with a shrug. The timing, Peyt thinks, is too perfect: he can tell it’s a well-worn joke. Mouth moving fast as her feet, she leads him across the rough circle of the library’s temporary yard. Explaining that her swaddling cloth was an antique musical score. That it was labelled HWV50. That the catalogues list the title of this oratorio as Esther—“And so have I been called ever since.”

  Librarians, she explains, adopt new names whenever the mood strikes. “That’s Parrot, once Javier, once Randall,” Esther says, pointing out a tall black man in baggy shorts and a tropical print shirt, bald as a skeleton and almost as thin. No lashes, no brows, no ’wind. Just a series of bright pink etchings up the left side of his body. Eyes that are all iris, no whites. “Much more fitting, neh?”

  Peyt agrees, but doesn’t get the chance to say so.

  “Picked up another stray, girl?” Parrot butts in, morning blue globes rolling in his sockets, rolling faster than Esther’s own eyes.

  “Keep squawking,” she replies, laughing, offering a bird of her own. “With luck you’ll happen upon a prettier tune.”

  Parrot flashes his teeth, sketches a mock bow of defeat before continuing on his way, carrying a stack of plastic chairs into a nearby pavilion. At the last minute, he lifts them high to avoid colliding with an old woman ducking beneath the tent flap.

  “And this is—” Esther begins, but is silenced by the barest flick of gnarled fingers.

  “Guillaume,” the woman introduces herself, voice and tight silver bun severe. One of her legs is substantially shorter than the other, her gait off-kilter. She limps toward them without benefit of a cane, wearing one polished leather shoe and one black baby bootie with a twelve-inch rubber sole. She does not wave or shake hands, but keeps her arms out to the sides for balance.

  “Precisely my point,” Esther says, turning to Peyt. “Yesterday I was to call this one Nan.”

  Guillaume grunts and clicks her tongue. “Record this one’s story,” she says, “feed him, and bid him farewell.” Rheumy-eyed stare. “In that order.”

  Esther dips her chin, winking at Peyt when Guillaume turns away.

  “And what about you, Peytr Borysson?” Esther considers him, measures his features with her gaze. The downturned angle of his eyelids. The sad hazel of his irises. The depressions that, in plumper days, were dimples. “Fancy a change? A new name is better than a fresh change of clothes—you won’t recognise yourself with it on. Perhaps Jaunty? Filippo? Louee? No, you’re right. Here, take my handkerchief. No, no, don’t worry. It’s all right. Those names were all wrong; it’s clear you are a Tristan.”

  Peytr sniffs and scrunches the wet from his eyes. The light lunch he ate sits like a rock in his stomach. He could hardly choke it down. His legs are weaker than water. She talks and talks, as if trying to cram her entire history into the space between the bus’s black steps and the first canopy set up in the clearing. And it’s weird, he thinks, that she’s so open with him. So candid about the loss of her past.

  “Hardly,” she says, then gestures at the vehicles parked around them. “How can I have lost what has always been here? And why wouldn’t I share? A story is just dead words if it isn’t told.”

  “Knock it off,” Peytr says, pulling his hoodstrings tight. Buttoning his jacket up to the throat. Cinching the straps of his backpack until they bite.

  Esther crosses her arms, mock serious, and playfully bumps him with her elbow. “Instructing a Librarian not to read is like commanding a soldier not to cry out in his sleep.”

  Peytr stops, face prickling heat. Esther pats his chest, right where his dog-tags are hidden beneath his jacket, and keeps walking, keeps talking, her wordwind teeming with numbers, categories, song lyrics, facts about the origins and significance of patronymic surnames. When Peyt doesn’t follow, she doubles back. Gently gripping his elbow, she pilots him past portable kitchens, with striped awnings angled over unshuttered serving windows, and around the open-sided marquees and canopies erected in the yard. In the shade they provid
e from the sun—the sun, Peyt thinks, steeping in the stink of its heat, what nonsense—about twenty or thirty people sit at wooden tables laden with baskets of nuts and dried fruits, platters of cheese, and boards piled high with bread. More file in, ants to a picnic, from the deadzones, and from the city beyond. Men in coveralls, in denim jeans and blue cotton, in well-tailored but threadbare suits. Women in wool dresses and cardigans and close-fitting hats. Women in uniform, doctors, teachers. Women in red skirts. Some in no skirts at all, just short little pants and short little shirts and expressions as tough as old stone. Young people in wheelchairs. Old people carried pig-a-back. No children, only babies not yet weaned. No soldiers. No one, Peyt thinks, like him.

  When the tables fill up, patrons perch on plastic crates. Lawn chairs. Wooden stools. Plates balanced on their laps, they speak between mouthfuls. Librarians ask questions, writing boards propped on knees as they listen, as they nod, as they smile and weep and frantically scribble down what’s being said. Some visitors recount tear-stained biographies, recipes, family affairs. Others speak silently, shaping symbols with their hands, signs that Parrot somehow understands. And yet other stories are mythical, magical, concerning knights and dragons and, whispered darkly, tales of times when the greys were kind. These last leave a blush in the tellers’ cheeks, a slump in their spines, white-knuckled kneading in laps. Whether sitting or wandering from tent to tent, the Librarians observe carefully. Hearing, certainly, but reading what can’t be spoken. Experiences chiselled into human bodies. The scars and mangled limbs. The fragmented wordwinds. The absent gazes. Every detail is recorded, none too big or too small for the library’s archives.